Using personality types in clinic

Have you ever categorised your patients? Yes, I hear you say! You probably sort patients into categories such as what treatments they have, their demographics, perhaps income level. But have you ever thought about their personality type?

Psychology may not always be at the forefront of an aesthetic practitioner’s mind, but after 20+ years in this industry, recently applying knowledge of psychometric testing to my business has been transformational. Some tools I’ve used for this are Insights Discovery, 16 Personalities, and Talent Dynamics, though there are dozens out there to choose from. What many of these testing tools have in common is that they often organise all personality types into a small number of wider categories, followed by any number of sub-categories and specific named personality types. Knowing this, I now mentally combine multiple tests and utilise a general framework of four categories by which to address my patients.

So whilst I’m not advocating testing each patient that comes through your door, what I can say is that having a basic understanding of the merits of psychometric testing, and mirroring its function by rudimentarily dividing your patients into a small number of categories, can really help your practice both in consultation and during treatment. Each practitioner’s framework or understanding will be unique, but I really encourage doing this exercise for yourself. Whether you utilise an existing test’s categories or combine multiple theories into one will be up to you and your understanding, but to better explain the benefits of this, let me give an example of the categories I use for my practice…

This is a short extract of an article originally published in Aesthetics Journal, Volume 9/Issue 5 (April 2022). To read the piece in full, please click the button above.