Welcome to the Transforming Bodies podcast series 3!
I’m absolutely stoked to share with you ourt “Dermatology Series”. I recently attended the ASCD (Australasian Society of Cosmetic Dermatology) 2024, and feel that Dermatology and especially Cosmetic Dermatology is not as prominent as it should be in the aesthetics arena. So I want to share some great insights and stories from Dermatologists and their peers.
Today, we’re diving into the world of laser aesthetics with the esteemed Dr. Antonio Campo, a seasoned Dermatologist from Barcelona with over 30 years of expertise and a PhD to boot! Dr Campo is so passionate about his work, his results, and his patients. You’ll enjoy today’s podcast, I was left feeling ‘pumped’ when I’d finished this great podcast!
Oh, and pay close attention, Dr Campo talks about as fast as I do!
Get ready to illuminate your knowledge on the power of lasers in aesthetics. Tune in now.
Laser Elegance: Aesthetic Insights with Dr Antonio Campo
Trish
Hello listeners, it’s Trish Hammond here from the Transforming Bodies podcast. And today, I’m joined by Dr Antonio Campo. Now Dr Campo is a dermatologist from Barcelona. He’s been in practice for over 30 years. He specialises in laser aesthetics, and he’s very highly qualified. He even has a PhD. And today, we’re gonna actually talk about basically lasers in aesthetics – so welcome Dr. Campo.
Dr Campo
Well, thank you very much. Pleasure to be here.
Trish
Thank you so much for being with us. I’ve been waiting for so long to do this.
Dr Campo
Yeah. Well, we had to look for a good time to come. So the Sciton company invited me to come to this meeting and it’s a pleasure. I love this country, its people are amazing and always always ready to come.
Trish
Yeah. Well, I’ve seen a few of your presentations, and you’re here in Australia. Now I know you’ve been around Japan and, like, you’re doing a circuit at the moment because you run a training academy for the Sciton devices. So I wanted to ask you, first of all, how did you actually get interested in laser aesthetics? Because you’re a dermatologist, like, how does that even start?
Dr Campo
Well, it was casual, not casual. I mean, it was working in the hospital and in my Chief of Department, when Dermatology started to be just thrown into the aesthetics, he just opened a new clinic. He was gonna open a clinic with 3 of the best Dermatologists in Barcelona. One of them was already specialised in Laser and Aesthetics in the Marjiva department where I wanted to join him in practice and then he looked for 3 younger people that could join the team so basically it was my chief department who invited me to be part of that team. And the first day I attached a laser, I just got in love with technology. I mean, I was surprised at what these devices would be able to do someday so I directly turned you into what I call a “techno freak”. So I’m really passionate about technology applied in Dermatology and the studies and I’ve been doing that in the last almost 30 years.
Trish
And so the very first like, what was the very first treatment or what was the first laser you got your hands on?
Dr Campo
When we started with, at that time, Lumenis had an IPL platform called Photoderma Vascular In IPL light, it was a combination of different types of light and laser. It just came out. It was the first IPL of the market, which is the main technology I’m using today, but now from another company. Then a bit later, I got in touch with another laser. I called like, pulsed lasers, Alexa and whatever. And I touch on all the different types, but I came originally from IPLs, and I’m now basically using IPLs. But the new generation ones, the ones, for example, from Sciton, the company I’m working with right now.
Trish
So tell us about the new generation IPLs, what are they and what are they? And I know a little bit about myself because I’ve had a treat myself and I’ve been blown away. So explain to us how they work and what makes them so good.
Dr Campo
I mean, the different devices in the market. It’s true at this company, Sciton, I wanna explain a bit about the company. The company is still owned by the founder of the company. It’s Jim Hobart.
This man is now 92 years old. He’s the first one that developed Sciton in the market. He was one of the founders of Coherent and the first laser company and then he finally went out of this company and created his own company Sciton, and he’s still there working every day in the lab doing new things so I had the chance to meet him. I work with him developing some of the handpieces of the device. But when you have you have the opportunity to work in a company where the guy who is still there is everyday thinking to make things better for us to customers. That makes a big difference. It’s the only company who does that. The others are not. I don’t think they’re bad. But the philosophy of this company is always to develop the best technology for the customers, which are the doctors that use this device and the customers. There are IPLs. I mean, there are many IPLs which are good, but for me, honestly, this is the best IPL of the market. It’s designed to be efficient, to be safe. This technology of permit use single class focussed, most of the signs of ageing that define a patient when they come to your practice.
So if the pigment is a concern, if the red is a concern, the skin quality, basically skin quality is a concern and the pore size, the lower shine, I mean, let’s say, don’t show you a tone anymore, your skin is uneven, all these issues more of you today just solve it a few sessions or you call the BBL. So it’s my number 1 treatment practice, the one I did to everyone. Everyone is a candidate for that treatment. Again, it’s a very easy treatment to do, very safe, low time, low down almost no downtime, I would say. Most of the patients don’t have any downtime at all. Now they include a new version called the HERO that permits us to give, let’s say, less energy when you do the passes, let’s say, a bit smoother to treat even Asian skin types or the skin types, patients with melasma so it absolutely increases the range of patients and just with two treatments, again, you get a homogeneous skin, we call it. It’s like the result of makeup without needing makeup. What happens in real patients remains so amazing that people then engage in what we call a four year end program, which is basically do I do my practice one treatment per year. I don’t live in the states, I do four. In China, we do one every month. In our practice, we saw that just with one single treatment year. The changes are amazing, amazing. People love it, there’s a hundred percent satisfaction. Again, easy to do, not painful, no downtime. The typical treatment, I will recommend to everyone and I think that everyone should be doing. If they wanna take care of their skin, it’s obviously an aesthetic procedure. But if you wanna take care of your skin, have a nicer appearance, this is with no doubt the treatment you have to do.
Trish
And why is it? Because all the photos that I see, why is it that when someone has a treatment and that, like and then five years later, the skin looks like, it’s like it stacks on top of each other. It just gets better and better. How can that even be possible?
Dr Campo
That’s what I told them. That’s what I told you. I mean, at the moment, you do yearly treatment, you remove the pigment. You are taking this pigment out afterwards before it’s even visible because before it’s because you start developing new pigmentation and spots, a certain time they start to be visible, but a certain time you don’t see the pigment yet because you don’t have enough amount. But if you remove it at that point, it never comes back. Then second, same with the redness, the vessels, you take them out. So if you have a tendency to redness, you won’t have them anymore. But besides that, there’s an effect of this that hits the water of the skin in fusion activation of the fibroblast that stimulates new collagen. This activation of collagen in use every year and every time you do a new session to get a little bit more makes the quality of the skin improve year after year. So as I showed in my pictures, you see that every time the patient comes, it’s not only they have not turned back to where they were before the laser, it is with every session to get a little bit more, very and better and the changes are amazing. I mean, we call it, I mean, we have pictures of patients ten years after and you saw this morning, it’s incredible. And they don’t have to come to my practice for three weeks to get injected just with one single treatment per year. We can show results after ten years, which are absolutely amazing.
Trish
Yeah. I’ll get blown away every time I see it because you see the first trim, and then one year later, and then, like, five or ten years later, they look even better than they did ten years ago. It’s like reversing the clock.
Dr Campo
To it, some of these features might say that patients have more laxity or they have more wrinkles or they have other things that we’re not targeting with the BBL, which is basically driven for the skin quality but the order first is the skin quality. The changes are amazing, long standing, and cumulative. That may make a treatment absolutely mandatory if you want to take care of your skin quality.
Trish
So do you reckon you’d participate for every person that comes in your clinic? You would pretty much do the BBL on like, is there anyone that you wouldn’t?
Dr Campo
No. I was doing training here to the people that have the device. I analysed one day in my practice. I sat down with my nurse at the door, took a paper, and I said, hey, we’re gonna do a study to see for the papers that come to the door. Which ones would be candidates for example for a toxin, which ones would be candidates for a filler and which would be candidates to get an IPL and BBL treatment? So we saw that 58% of patients that came through our door could have Botox because they had lines on their forehead. The crows feet at 45% could probably benefit from a filler because they had volume loss or lines. All the patients that come to the lower patients for BBL because everyone has issues with the skin colours, redness, tone, pores, and all these issues are targeted with BBL. So in my practice, I call it, it’s difficult even for me to start any rejuvenation program for any patient, even if they come up with something else if I don’t propose a BBL first. For me, it’s when I compare the origination with a building, a BBL is the basement. It’s something you have to do even before doing anything else, it’s true that if the patient comes in the summertime, you might be starting with a toxin or filler, but I will absolutely try to convince them to do BBL because any other treatment you on top of that would be much more visible. If you remove lines from the fluid phase, but the patient has pigmentation and spots, you’re not going to see the result as much because when you look at the patient, what do you see are the spots? If you take the spots out and you remove lines, the result is ten times better because there’s nothing that disturbs your vision when you look at the patient. Because again, in my opinion, when you look at anyone, even laxity, the first thing is the skin sees the skin quality and if you don’t fix that first, any other treatment you put on top will not be as efficient.
Trish
So it’s almost like it’s the foundation. Foundation before anything else.
Dr Campo
Absolutely. It is that if you ever had considered a rejection of the building, you have different floors, BBL has to be the basement. It’s the first shipment that they’ll have to do that anyway. I don’t care about keeping any full laxity. They might be comfortable laxity aligned, whatever. If you look at them, they’re surely patients for BBL. And I tell you if you do that first the results you’re gonna get afterwards in the other treatments is much better because you have already improved the skin quality so the result of the Botox or filler will be much more evident that the skin looks amazing.
Trish
And what about, like, in Australia? Because we got a lot of sun. So what’s, what like, would you still do it on people in Australia? Or what do people have to do to make sure they don’t mess up their skin after BBL?
Dr Campo
Well, I’m in Spain. Spain is very similar to here. We have a lot of sun, people in May, April start to go to the beach and we have a lot of summertime in the sun. What we’re coming to even as the Doctors, as Dermatologists, just to be aware of the danger of sun exposure. So we recommend people to use sunscreen when you go out in the sun. However, with BBL, the only condition I need to be doing a BBL is that the patient didn’t have a very intense sun exposure. With that, I mean, that they were not at the beach or skiing the mountain the two weeks before the treatment and one week after. When they come to a practice, they should not have, they should not get tanned. I’m gonna make an exception because now two things have even changed. Usually we recommend them not to be at the sun two weeks before. Because the avenue contains new melanin, you need to increase the amount of melanin, the risk of burning the skin is a bit higher. And after treatments why they’re red, they’ve inflammation, they should not get exposed to the sun because they might have afterwards post inflammatory pigmentation so if the skin is inflamed and is exposed to the sun, there’s a risk of getting pigmented afterwards.
So avoiding exposure two weeks before and one week after, you can do it with no problems. In my country, for some reason in July, August, I always tell you if a patient’s not gonna be in the sun until August, I can perfectly do a BBL in July, mid July. What happens now is I told you there’s this new advancement of the technology of Sciton which is the HERO. It’s exactly the same device, but now we have a program that delivers instead of very intense passes, smoother passes, lower energy and more passes, we slowly heat to the pigment. What I have seen with that is we can extend the treatment even to the sun exposure times. And the other day, I did a patient that came completely tanned. The logical thing would have been to tell him to come later in a few weeks after he gets out of the I mean, he removes the tanning. But he couldn’t because he had other things to do. What we did is use a program called HERO, which is a bit less intense so the results are not gonna be amazing, but permits me to have darker skin, I mean, sun exposed skin even to extend the season of the treatment to the summertime.
Okay, so it’s not the, let’s say, it’s not the optimal situation because it’s better not to be tanned into a treatment. But even in those cases, we can do treatment. And again, the same program permits us today to extend a conventional, what would be a conventional IPL, which is forbidden for darker skin types. Thanks to this program, he can now treat Asian skin types, patients with melasma, Hispanic skin types, up to skin types five, which are really, really dark.
So it’s an amazing advancement and we’re just absolutely changing our practice today.
Trish
Yeah. Right. And do you look like one of the stuff you combine with the BBL with the broadband light? Like, is there like, would you use that, say, for a scarring? Or is it just a BBL?
Dr Campo
It’s a BBL means, it’s a powerful platform. We call it the Joulex from Sciton, we call it the Swiss knife. We have their different technologies lasers that you can adapt and attach. You can buy the ones you wanted, according to the reasons you wanted. According to what you have, we will choose BBL, for example, which is good when we can use it also for red scars. When someone has a red scar, a fresh red scar, or after some time that the scar is still red. BBL permits us to take the redness away. It also smoothens the texture a little bit, it’s a little bit hypertrophic. It’s another technology they’re called a ClearSilk, which is an ND YAG laser that also treats redness and helps to soften these scars. Then we have a fractionated hybrid laser for more advanced ageing when you have more wrinkles or the textures or the pores are more deleted. We are applying that over the BBL, this fractional device to increase the results a little bit. Then we have an Erbium laser full surface with a single spot that permits us to take care as teenagers of her keratosis out of the patient and these are things that appear with time so patients with the ageing signs, the pigment, the redness, the pores might have other things, there’s always a tool there to add on top of that to remove that, actinic keratosis, separate keratosis. And at the end, we have a fractional full surface Erbium to remove the lines around the mouth, around the eyes. These are more aggressive treatments. They might have a bit more downtime. You need to nerve block the pain, frame is a bit more painful. So it’s true. It’s not as easy as doing a BBL, but whenever ageing goes higher and higher, we always have a solution for that. Means that it’s true that treatments might be a little more intense. I like the word aggressive, a little more intense and that the patient might understand that for those types of treatments, they have to take some days off. But the results are absolutely incredible. Besides that, we obviously also need to have other techniques in our practice like toxins, for example, the lines. Fillers are a crazy user of Calcium Hydroxylapatite because it’s besides the filler, by stimulating ageing. We want to have these treatments that, besides having immediate results, activate the response of our body to have a preempt effect on the time. So we are changing our minds from the original hyaluronic acid that everyone was using as a filler, which basically fills, but then results go away. To fillers like Calcium Hydroxylapatite that besides filling India’s new collagen, we have a preventive effect in the laxity and the loss of volume in the future.
Trish
Okay. And I’ve actually heard that there’s even research about the BBL being like and I don’t know if I heard it right because it was just my brain but also as a precursor to cancer cells or something. What’s that about?
Dr Campo
Well, there has been a study performed by Patrick Bitter in Stanford. They analysed the gene expression of the skin of patients that had been exposed to the sun and then they looked at the same expression of the genes in young patients. Then they did treatments on the skin of the aged people that were exposed to this indeed and other biopsy in what they saw is a swift on the expression of the genes from what was usual on the exposed sun areas to know what happens to the younger people, who are not exposed to the sun so it’s like a switching expression of genes to a younger skin type without sun exposure. So you can turn a skin, I mean, the expression of genes of the sun exposure skin to that of a non exposed twenty year old person and they studied that in the they found in this genes that turned to be expressed after receiving a BBL treatment, we’ll call it Forever Young program, the series of treatments.
In these genes that turn to be expressed, they find anti oncogenes. What are these? These are genes that are supposed to be stopping the development of skin cancer. Well, this is a I mean, we have seen that. You cannot absolutely confirm that the fact of doing BBLs will prevent the fact of having cancer, but it’s something that it’s reliable. I mean, it makes you think they’d probably feel like that because we have an expression of things that you know are supposed to be able to stop the development of skin cancer. Anyway, if it’s not through that, what happened also, there’s behaviour change on the patients that start to take care of their skin. As soon as you start to do BBLs, you’re gonna want to have nicer skin. You now understand how important it is to protect yourself from the sun and your sunscreen. So even if it’s only for that, BBL is good because you will probably put in the patient’s mind the need to use sunscreen, which also will help to prevent skin cancer.
Trish
Yeah, that’s so true because it makes you a bit more aware.
Dr Campo
You want to be investing money in getting a nicer appearance, improving your skin quality, just to make an effort and apply sunscreen to make sure you’re not making it. I mean, you’re not destroying the whole world. Okay? And this fact only reduces your sun exposure will also help to prevent the presence of skin future skin cancer.
Trish
Yeah. Right. And so your job at the moment seems like travelling the world and teaching people about all the things that you’ve learned and all that. So but you have, like, you do things differently. Like, I guess, you’ve probably done it so many times over the years that you’ve learned different things. So how has that kind of evolved? Like, obviously, you must learn things all the time as well because everything does not change, but it evolves. Like, what I heard you speak about last year is you kinda build on it this year as well.
Dr Campo
Well, yeah, we learn from what we do every day at the end and you have the device in your practice, you start doing new things, and the company companies develop new technologies. You think how you can apply that and that makes you learn. My practice is a little bit different from the average. I basically do laser studies in laser, but I have a very medical background. I was in the hospital, I was a mole surgeon, a cancer surgeon, and it also did the study of that.
Now. I’m only doing aesthetics, but my mind is still the one of a doctor, which is always looking for, I call, the concept I define as Cosm-Ethical and Rational Dermatology and instead of Cosmo Ethical and Rheumatology, the description of that concept is that I’m concerned about the study of my patients. I want them to get better vision because I think that self esteem is important for your emotional health. You have to feel good about yourself, and I think that taking care of your aesthetic appearance is part of your health because it might make you feel better about yourself. But always in a medical concept and environment, what does it mean that and that brings me to the ethical part. The ethical part of my work as a doctor is not to perform all the treatments which are in the market. Because many of them are not rentable. I mean, there’s a lot of technology going out every day, a lot of techniques that have no scientific background. Let’s be honest, there’s a lot of money behind. The companies want to develop new things to sell devices and machines, but not everything that comes out is really useful and rentable. So my job is to analyse all these technologies and treatments, not only select those from my page that I really think have what I call them, and that’s exactly what BBL does. Which has an amazing result from the beginning. The results have to be long, standing and persistent. I want my patients to get treatments that get a result every week after they turn to their starting point, like, this is useless. So I’m gonna have a good result from the beginning. This result had to be long standing, and you have to be cumulative. So when I repeat the treatment, I will get a little bit more. Exactly the definition of BBL Forever Young program. So you get an amazing result at the beginning. If you don’t do treatments in three years, you still have an amazing persistent result. And then if you do another treatment or anywhere recommended to it every year, but if you cannot do it, you’re not going to lose that result in two, three years and every time you do another treatment, you get a little bit more. Okay, that’s the ethical part, treatment that should be in a reasonable price range. And the rational part I think is that I will only perform the treatments that my patients really need. So if they ask me something, and I think they really don’t need it I’m not going to perform that. I may go with joy, but you can go today to a plastic surgeon to ask for a third breast, and they’re gonna be planned. You have a third breast because you asked for that. We’re talking about the issues about the lips, for example, lip augmentation. They have to be there, but sometimes you have to be putting our feet on the ground and saying, hey, Do it in a reasonable way. Okay? And I think sometimes we lose this concept of rationality. So we have to do really things that are only those things which are really needed So and in a logical order. Okay? I think you have to do the most important or visible things at the beginning and let for the end the more expensive, complicated, preventive treatments. If you do it this way and I go back to our starting point, BBL, it has to be the first treatment because it’s easy to do and correct the first to give you a patient. It’s easy to perform, you see immediate results. Patients who are not suffering. It’s an amazing, complicated treatment. For that, hey, at the end, if we need to do a resurfacing going on for the lines, it’s okay, but it’s not going to be my first line treatment because the patients need to go first for the easiest things at the beginning. So with this concept being things the right way with the treatments that are really efficient, long standing persistent in a logical order, we might be doing amazing origination programs, and the patients won’t feel that you’re just trying to (sorry about that) get their money because sometimes they have this sensation that when you go to anaesthetic practice, it’s like a never ending story. You have to go and then every three weeks go back and do something else. This is not my target. I always tell my patients I want to be as less as possible in the practice and to spend as less money as they need to get the best results. But for that, you need to really choose the best techniques and best technologies and that’s our work as doctors to do this to this choice. I mean, they did this selection.
Trish
Yeah. That’s so true. And what about so tell me about the training? So what about so just because like, how can for the end consumer, like, obviously, everyone has different techniques but does everyone have the same training? Or the more you learn, does that get passed on?
Like, how’s the company making sure that everybody’s trained?
Dr Campo
You mean the company of Lasers? Well, what happened is I mean, it depends on the company. I have to be honest, I worked with other companies before, and I don’t only see the name, but I was working with the company. I’ve been doing this for 18 years for a certain filler. I have a bit of experience with that filler and I was working with them as a trainer. I didn’t even train the trainer because my practice training people was not bad, but that had a very high impact in social media. And what happened is after training those, I was not called anymore because these companies were very interested in having high potential, let’s say, Doctors that are very hot on social media to be the ones doing the training and what happened is that it’s not the same thing, honestly. So these types of companies exist and what happens is the training goes down, let’s say the quality of those goes down. Some of these companies even don’t want you to tell them what you think, they want to tell you what they wanna hear. So I have a course for one of these companies trying how I use this filler and my technique for laxity. But since I was telling my opinion that this certain technology was really good, but basically preventive and very painful, and they concluded that this was going against the policy of the company, they decided not to support that course and I’m not working with them anymore. So what happens is that you need that. I mean, I want to work with companies that really let us say what we really think and that’s why, at this moment, I work with Sciton. I have the incredible luck to work within developing some of the technologies they have and it’s gonna be really invest a lot of effort in training. I mean, their devices are very complicated to use some of the applications because it’s a high-part technology and they are putting a lot of effort into creating, let’s say, an environment where the customers can get trained on that. Me personally two years ago – we learned that teaching could be done without being present at least one part of his teaching. So I launched a teaching academy, Optimage Virtual academy. And I started this project just with Sciton technology because they wanna have my practice and I’m very happy because the company I didn’t know about my own without telling them. I just did the whole platform, the whole teaching brand, and once when it was created, I presented it to the company to know if it would be of interest for them, and they loved it. And now we are offering this course for Sciton customers built up by the device. It’s like I call it a virtual manual so they can go there and let’s say we put in their hands my 18 years of experience with their devices on how to get the best result with this, let’s say technology is really, really powerful. But for that, you have to have companies that really are focusing more on teaching the customers and in selling. Because if the teaching is with the idea of only selling, I think what happened to you is that you take these very famous Instagrammers, who really don’t have so much experience and unfortunately, this is happening in most of the companies, many of the companies. In that case, I have to say the Sciton relationship with them is amazing. In fact, I’m now 15 days off giving this type of training.
I’ve been in Australia for 3 days. I’m gonna go to Vietnam and Ireland. I love teaching as one of my passions.
Trish
Oh, you’re so good. Look, just just it’s some by the time you finish talking, like, people in that river pumped.
Dr Campo
Yeah. We try to make it easier. I think teaching has to be put at the level of the people and you have to transmit the important information and not get lost in what we call the superficial information. I spend a lot of time preparing the talk because I think about what I think people need to know and how to fit it in the time you do have when you give the talk. But I’m really passionate about teaching and having this passion and having the opportunity that a company like Sciton really puts that in value and not the fact of being more or less famous, obviously, I mean, I’m not a famous Doctor earlier, I’m not the I mean, your people know me that I’m not a one of the Popes that goes around the world but had an opportunity to work with a company like that, that for me has the best laser of the market and being one KOLs and training the people who are getting these devices is absolutely an honour. Again, because I love teaching and I have a lot of pleasure interacting with the people that come in. I also learned a lot when I did these courses because some of the people might be doing things that I’m not doing. So let’s say, it’s a gift and a transaction of information received. But again, for that, you need a company that is really, really focussed in teaching and not turning the teaching into a sales activity, which, unfortunately, happens with many of the companies that they don’t really want something that teaches or he they want something that sells their product. And then the customers can be a bit lost in the way.
Trish
Yep. So just I mean, that’s so interesting. I love this and so it’s the last thing. So for example, if you were to meet a Dermatologist who just started dermatology today and you and it’s okay that looking towards the future, if you were a Dermatologist today, what would be advice to you that you mean, you are a dermatologist ever. What advice would you give to a new Dermatologist starting out today?
Dr Campo
To put passion in the work, and look at the things you can do as a Dermatologist, but do only the things that you are really passionate about. Don’t do things for money. Okay? I have unfortunately seen a lot of people joining this. I mean, the people think that this laser just gives you a lot of money, which is probably true. You can make a lot of money that depends on how you manage your practice. Money is not the objective of my practice. Obviously, I work to live and I need to make money to live, but it’s not my main goal. My main goal is to have satisfied patients, get the best on them with the lowest cost possible for them to leave it against the business model that we have today that it seems that you have to take and get money all the time. I wanna do it. My passion is to do the best job I can, get the best results for my patient, make them spend the least money they have to get the best results and I do that because I have passion for what I do. So absolutely, the first as I told you at the beginning, the first day I touched the laser, I said, wow, if I know I wanna do it because I was absolutely amazed about what light could do in the skin and looking at the reaction of the vessels it was like I discovered. If you get to that point in any of the parts of dermatology, they’re just telling you you have to do that. It’s like I was a surgeon too.
I have loved to do surgery before, but unfortunately, the situation in our pay is not good. Our honour rates are really, really bad. So I had to decide – I had to decide – I have four kids. I needed to survive economically, so I had to quit the hospital practice. I was a mole surgeon and I’m a skin surgeon. And in my practice, you’re gonna have to stop doing dermatology because I could not afford for the race day I was getting. I was lucky because I was already doing aesthetics and lasers and I had a lot of passion. I have a lot of passion for that. So, yeah, I still have, I’m still doing something I like very much. I would recommend anyone that starts anything in any profession and especially if it’s a case of Dermatologists doing the specialty, analyse the things you’re doing them specialty and the day you see something where you’re having a lot of passion, just put all your efforts there and dedicate your life to that because you’re gonna be happy. And you’re gonna do it, and you’re gonna do a good job, a good job. When you do things for passion, you’re going to be really, really good. If you’re doing it for money, it’s not going to be you’re not going to have a good dent.
Trish
One hundred percent. And I said that to my kids, do what you love because the money will come.
Dr Campo
I hate that I’m not gonna cry. I mean, I have four kids. I’m really happy I can hold four kids.
They’re actually in university seats. I mean, I’m not gonna blame. So if I compare with other countries, our situation is much worse but I’m really happy with that. I’m not gonna claim.
And obviously, if you were good, it’s much easier than at the end of things work. I mean, I think that anyone that really works with passion in his job will absolutely succeed. It is impossible not to succeed if you have passion and do things well and money is a secondary thing. I mean, I just want to pay my bills. And as I said, I have my kids and hey, and that’s it. That’s my target in life to have a family and have time for them. In fact, not right now, I just reduced my activity. I work three days a week. In practice, I do have two days off for my little boy, a little one. I have four. So that I travel a lot and that compensates a little bit and that’s why I take more days off. But in practice today, I spent basically three days and the rest was teaching my kids and dictating time for living because I think it’s very important to be at home.
Trish
Yep. Thank you so much.
Dr Campo
Thank you, that’s so long. Thank you for that.
Trish
And this is look, if you wanna find out a bit more about Dr Campo, you can check out I’ll do a transcript of this audio. But also you can find him on what’s your training Academy called?
Dr Campo
It’s the Optimage Virtual Academy.
Trish
Okay. That’s Optimage Virtual Academy.
Dr Campo
That’s a teaching Academy. Yeah. The website, we’re gonna change the name now. It’s optimage clinic, is gonna be the one we have, like, a campo- optimage, but we’re gonna change it.
Trish
That’s much better, easier for us to remember us, Australians. Yeah. Awesome. Well, thank you so much for joining us today.
Dr Campo
Thank you for inviting me.
Trish
Awesome. Bye.
Dr Campo
Bye bye.
