Has COVID 19 really changed the way we do beauty… that much???
After 3 full months of working from home, tirelessly creating content to assist students with their learning during the lockdown period and as a team creating and revising various protocols to ensure work in our industry, which is considered high risk, is as safe as possible, I get back to college and a student says…” You know Miss, all the things they’re saying we need to do, are things you’ve been teaching us all along. It’s in all our books and we are taught to practise this type of hygiene in class. It’s not all-new”. She hit the nail on the head.
I was immediately transported back to my days as a beauty therapy student. Hygiene. Hygiene. Hygiene. We were required to sanitise, disinfect and sterilise everything. Even the seemingly ridiculous things like the air vents and the skirtings, which as students, we spent a lot of time complaining about. If you were caught touching your face or moving a lock of your hair in a treatment, off to the basin you would march to scrub your hands or spray them with surgical spirits before continuing with the treatment. The slightest sniffle and you were asked to “mask up”. Every single item that touched a client’s skin would need to sterilized and placed in a UV cabinet to maintain the sterilization until we were ready to use it. Methylated spirits were used in abundance to clean and spray everything. Hair had to be gelled back so it didn’t hang in your face, nails short and clean. Removing cream from jars with spatulas, no double-dipping and so much more. This is no exaggeration. Our training to become beauty therapists has prepared us more than we know, to implement the highest hygiene standards in every treatment, even before the threat of COVID 19. Every single exam, both theory and practical had a hygiene section where you learned about the various hygiene threats and practises to minimise them. Disinfectants and antiseptics, viruses & bacteria, diseases and disorders were all part of our curriculum.
I am very pleased to say that the very same, is applicable today. This level of hygiene is still a mandatory part of the curriculum and criteria of every single beauty therapy course you take at a credible institution.
For some, the bad habits step in when we enter the industry. Very much like moving from the K53 driving to what you do after you pass your drivers licence.
So the answer to the initial question is a resounding is NO. COVID 19 has not really changed the way we do beauty… that much. Instead, it takes us back to basics. To the way, we were taught to practise. Add to this, face masks, visors, social distancing and 1 or 2 other protocols and we were all, already on the right track to preventing the spread of infections in our spas and salons.
For further information on Beauty Therapy Institute and its campuses, please contact Merril Elvey on bti@beautytherapyinstitute.co.za.
www. beautytherapyinstitute.co.za