Reviews of Plastic Surgeon Dr. Gavin Sandercoe, Sydney NSW

Thanks for visiting this page. In short, there are no reviews or testimonials on Dr Gavin Sandercoe’s website. Below is an explanation of why they are illegal, and a quick history of the legislation adjustments since 2010.

The Australian Health Practitioners Regulation Agency (AHPRA) issued ‘Guidelines for Advertising’ in 2010. Within this document, the rules state that the use of testimonials is unacceptable advertising.

This was followed by the Updated Advertising Guidelines, which came into effect on 20^th May 2014. This was a confusing document, but summary of the important points follows.

• The National Law bans the use of testimonials in advertising a regulated health service.
• Testimonials are statements making a recommendation about a service or its quality.
• Advertising is something that intends to promote or encourage the use of a regulated health service.
• Practitioners that are using their social media page to advertise regulated health services must remove any testimonials that are part of their advertising.
• Practitioners are not responsible for removing unsolicited testimonials published on a website or social media over which they do not have control.

There has been a further tightening in the federal “Guidelines for registered medical practitioners who advertise cosmetic surgery“. This comes into effect on 1st July 2023, requiring another adjustment to this page. The key points in this document are:-

• Advertising must not be false, misleading or deceptive.
• Clarity about how to convey level of training. For example, pages about Dr Gavin Sandercoe now need to state his AHPRA registration number (MED0001182300) and the fact that the level of training and registration is Specialist Plastic Surgeon (specialist registration in Surgery – Plastic Surgery).
• There must be no financial incentive to encourage indiscriminate or unnecessary use of health services.
• Testimonials are still banned and any link or engagement with testimonials is a breach of federal guidelines.
• Social media influencers and ambassadors are banned.
• Clarity about the use of before and after images. Stock photography on websites was also banned (so I apologise if the website gets more dull whilst we work this one out)
• All pages and images of cosmetic surgery must carry information (or a link to information) about risks.
• Expectations of outcome must be realistic. There is a bunch of terms that were specifically banned.
• Advertising must not target people that are potentially at risk.

We are always grateful when a patient shares their positive experiences with the world, and are keen to hear directly from patients that feel we could improve our services to patients.

If you have found this website through a search engine, you will likely find reviews on that search engine, or be able to find links to review sites.