Finding a good Piercer

DON'T BELIEVE EVERYTHING YOU READ IN ADVERTS - OR ON THE INTERNET.

Many unscrupulous piercers feel they have to tell lies to get customers:

These unscrupulous practitioners rely on the fact that you know nothing about piercing, so the more you learn about piercing before you look for a piercer, the better. Finding a good piercer is far more difficult than you think.

There is no "industry standard" and every piercer uses a different method, which suits them. None of the methods of piercing that are used today are necessarily wrong, providing the piercer is following the CIEH guidelines, but some methods can cause more pain and damage than others. (There is an awful lot of pain and damage caused by untrained hacks no matter what method is used.)

Due to the increasing popularity of piercing a large number of ill-informed, poorly trained and un-qualified people are practicing piercing because of the amount of profit they can make. Unlike tattooing, there is no legislation to protect you and many money hungry hacks are taking full advantage of this.

The only way to learn piercing is to learn from an experienced piercer through an apprenticeship. You can't learn piercing from a book, a 2 hour video or a short training course. It takes a full 6 months to learn the hygiene standards before you even start to do piercing. It is important that you are supervised for the first 2 years, so that any mistakes you make are rectified before they become habit. Bodypiercing requires an awful lot of "underpinning knowledge" that takes years of piercing to learn.

The Chartered Institute of Environmental Health have issued guidelines to piercers that state: "Piercers must be constantly supervised during the first year of practice by a practitioner who has been SUCCESSFULY performing body art procedures for at least 5 years. It may take up to 2 years of full-time practice to achieve the MINIMUM level of competence".

There are a large number of organisations that will send certificates to those who are willing to pay for them. A number of unscrupulous piercers are giving certificates of competence to anyone who pays for a short course. These are NOT an indication of a piercers ability. Some unscrupulous piercers are now offering training courses as a way for them to generate income and are passing on their own bad practice to others. Some of these even have backing from training councils ( Just a way of getting money from the government ). I was horrified to learn that the government has sanctioned a course offering a diploma to anyone who completes a 6 month correspondence course !!!

The Environmental Health Department of your local council will register a piercing studio after checking basic hygiene, but Aseptic techniques and piercing ability are not checked. Although the registration certificate is not an indication of a piercers ability, it can be a good method of ascertaining how long your piercer has been piercing professionally.

In order to try and help with your search for a competent piercer, follow these guidelines when looking round. These aren't a guarantee that your piercing experience will go well, but it should go some way to filtering out those piercers that could cause you serious harm.

Use someone who specialises solely in piercing
because they spend all their time developing just one skill. Hairdressers and Nail Studios are best given a wide berth because of pathogens in the air that can harm your piercing. Tattooists that do piercing as a money making sideline assume they know how to pierce, but the methods and hygiene techniques used are entirely different. Because of the way tattoos are made, there is a microspray of blood and tissue floating in the air that can be passed into you during the piercing procedure, even when a seperate room is used.
Ask people with good, healed piercings where they got theirs.
Ask around and ascertain if the piercer you want to use has a good reputation. Ask grown-ups with loads of healed piercings where they got theirs, and ask what the experience was like. No use asking the kids - they just go to any unscrupulous piercer that will do it for them without parental consent. Hardly a recommendation.
Search the internet
Type in the name of the piercing studio you want to go to into your favourite search engine, and see what others say about the place. Go to bmezine (link on links page) and do a search for personal experiences.

Go and see the piercer.

ALL good piercers start by having piercings themselves
There is NO EXCEPTION TO THIS RULE. It doesn't bother me how many nail technicians send me rude messages. A piercer that has no piercings is obviously not interested in piercing, and you MUST assume that they know very little about the subject, and are out to fatten their bank accounts at your expense. You would never trust a chef that didn't eat his own food ...would you ?
Do your homework and ask loads of questions.
A good piercer will be able to answer ALL your questions no matter how trivial you think they are. Some good piercers can be extremely busy and may not be able to talk to you at length, but preparing your questions in advance may help.
Ask to see registration certificates from the local authority.
Although these are not an indication of ability they do show how long that person has been piercing if you look carefully. If they tell you they have 35 years experience they will be able to show registration for that time.
Have a good look around.
There should be a special room used just for piercing. A curtain does not make a seperate room. This is really important for both privacy and hygiene. This room should look and smell clean and be a relaxing atmosphere. The walls, floors and furniture must be wipeable. The room must be sparsely furnished, as clutter makes it difficult to keep clean. Make sure there are at least 2 sinks (one with elbow or foot operated taps), a vacuum autoclave, Ultrasonic cleaning bath, Medical waste bin and Sharps bin. Make sure that there are "Fainting Zones" around all the furniture, so if the worst does happen you won't end up with concussion, or worse.
Make sure that you receive FULL piercing information and aftercare instructions in WRITING.
before you have any piercing, so that you can refer to these at a later date if neccessary. You are not likely to remember aftercare instructions that are given verbally. Make sure that there is an out of hours phone number in case of emergencies (usually a mobile phone number ).
Look at the piercers appearance and manner.
If they look clean and professional it is usually a good sign. Check the piercers hands to see if they are clean . Check the piercers clothes and get close enough to see if they smell . Do you feel like you might be at the Dentists ?

USE YOUR COMMON SENSE !

If it doesn't feel right, or the piercer is dirty or has infected, migrating piercings or you know they are lying to you is it really worth taking the chance with your health and risking your life for their bank balance ? You only have one body - and you are the only person who can protect it.

Don't be the next person reported in the papers as the victim of a bad piercer. If you do, after reading all of this .. shame on you !

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