01Article · Checking credentials
Look them up —
before you book.
Every registered health practitioner in Australia appears on a free public register, and the entry says considerably more than whether they are registered. It shows the type of registration, any specialty, any endorsement, and any condition placed on their practice. This page explains how to read one, what each registration type means, why the title of surgeon is protected, and what the letters after a practitioner's name do and do not represent.
02In short
Search the AHPRA Register of practitioners by name or registration number. Read the registration type, not just the status: general registration means a doctor may practise without supervision and says nothing about training in any particular field, while specialist registration names a recognised specialty. Check for conditions, undertakings and endorsements further down the entry. Under the National Law the title of surgeon may only be used by a doctor holding specialist registration in surgery, obstetrics and gynaecology, or ophthalmology. A college fellowship such as FACCSM(Surg) is training in cosmetic medicine and surgery rather than a specialist registration, so it sits outside that title. Dr Nara holds general registration, MED0001201549, and is described throughout this site as a cosmetic doctor.
03Why this page exists
A minute of reading —
before a consultation.
Patients research procedures thoroughly and practitioners barely at all. That is not carelessness. It is that the register is not well known, the terminology is genuinely confusing, and the letters after a name look authoritative whether or not the reader knows what they mean.
There is a reasonable argument that a practice explaining how to check credentials is marking its own homework. We would rather publish it anyway, and apply it to ourselves as readily as to anyone else. Dr Nara holds general registration, which is why this site calls him a cosmetic doctor throughout. A patient who looks him up will find exactly what is written here.
Take your time, ask questions, and seek a second medical opinion before you commit to anything.
— Dr Kishen Nara, RevAesthetic Melbourne.
04The lookup
Five steps —
about a minute.
The register covers every registered health practitioner in Australia across 16 regulated professions, not only doctors. The same method works for a nurse, a psychologist or an anaesthetist.
- 01Go to the Register of practitioners on the AHPRA website. It is free, public, and needs no account.
- 02Choose the profession. For a doctor, select Medical practitioner.
- 03Search by name, or by registration number if you have it. A registration number is exact and avoids the problem of a practitioner registered under a different given name.
- 04If the name returns nothing, ask the practice for the registration number directly. A registered practitioner will give it to you without hesitation.
- 05Open the entry and read all of it, not just the green tick at the top. The detail below the status line is the part that matters.
The register is published by AHPRA at ahpra.gov.au. Dr Nara's entry is under registration number MED0001201549.
05Reading the entry
What is on the page —
below the status line.
Most people read the first line, see that the practitioner is registered, and close the tab. The informative fields are underneath it.
- 01Registration status, showing whether the practitioner is currently registered and permitted to practise.
- 02Registration type, which is the single most informative field on the page. The types are explained below.
- 03Specialty and field of specialty practice, shown only where the practitioner holds specialist registration.
- 04Endorsements, which record additional approved qualifications recognised by the Board.
- 05Conditions on registration, meaning restrictions placed on what the practitioner may do or the supervision they must work under.
- 06Undertakings, which are binding commitments a practitioner has given to the Board.
- 07Reprimands, where one has been issued and published.
- 08Registration number, principal place of practice, and the date registration expires.
06The six types
Registration types —
what each one means.
The Medical Board of Australia issues six types of registration. The distinction that matters most to a cosmetic surgery patient is the one between general and specialist.
- GeneralThe practitioner has met the requirements to practise medicine in Australia without supervision. It is the standard registration type held by most doctors, including many who perform cosmetic procedures. It does not indicate any particular field of practice.
- SpecialistHeld in addition to general registration by a practitioner whose specialist qualification is recognised for their field, such as plastic surgery, general surgery or dermatology. The entry names the specialty and the field of specialty practice.
- ProvisionalHeld by a medical graduate completing an internship or an initial supervised training period.
- LimitedGranted for a defined purpose: postgraduate training or supervised practice, an area of need, the public interest, or teaching and research.
- Non-practisingHeld by a practitioner who is registered but not currently practising. A practitioner with non-practising registration may not treat patients.
- StudentHeld by students in an approved program of study. Not a treating practitioner.
General registration is not a lesser or provisional status. It is the ordinary registration a doctor holds to practise unsupervised in Australia. What it does not do is tell you anything about training in a particular field, because it is the same entry whether the doctor works in general practice, emergency medicine or cosmetic medicine. That gap is what the questions further down this page are for.
07Protected titles
Why the word surgeon —
is regulated.
A protected title is one the law reserves for practitioners who meet a defined standard, so that the word carries the same meaning wherever a patient encounters it. Using a protected title without holding the relevant registration is an offence under the National Law.
For medical practitioners, surgeon is a protected title. It may only be used by a doctor who holds specialist registration in surgery, obstetrics and gynaecology, or ophthalmology. The protection extends to compound forms, so a doctor with general registration cannot lawfully describe themselves as any kind of surgeon, however many operations they have performed. Specialist is similarly reserved for practitioners holding specialist registration in a recognised specialty.
This matters when reading a practice website. A practitioner performing cosmetic operations under general registration should be described as a cosmetic doctor, a medical practitioner, or a doctor who performs cosmetic surgery. If a website uses a protected title that the register does not support, that is a discrepancy worth noticing, and it can be raised with AHPRA.
Dr Nara holds general registration. He is a cosmetic doctor and a registered medical practitioner, not a registered specialist surgeon, and that is the language used across this site. Our companion article on choosing a cosmetic doctor covers the same ground from the decision side.
08The newer field
The cosmetic surgery —
endorsement.
An endorsement is a note on a practitioner's registration recording an additional approved qualification. The cosmetic surgery endorsement was introduced through the cosmetic surgery reforms as a way for the public register to show that a doctor has completed training assessed against standards set by the Australian Medical Council and approved by the Medical Board of Australia.
The accreditation standards and the registration standard have both been approved, and education providers may apply to the Australian Medical Council to have their programs accredited. A doctor who completes an accredited program can then apply to the Board to have the endorsement recorded on their registration, where it becomes visible on the public register.
Two things are worth keeping straight. The endorsement is aimed at doctors who do not hold specialist surgical registration, and it does not confer the protected title of surgeon, which remains tied to specialist registration. Because the accreditation process is still working through, the endorsement field will be absent from most entries for the present, and its absence does not mean a practitioner has done anything wrong.
09Letters after a name
College fellowships —
and what FACCSM(Surg) is.
The letters after a practitioner's name are qualifications awarded by universities and by colleges. They are not registration, they are not shown on the register in the way registration type is, and they vary a great deal in what they represent. A patient cannot be expected to know one from another, so it is entirely reasonable to ask a practitioner to explain their own.
FACCSM stands for Fellow of the Australasian College of Cosmetic Surgery and Medicine, and the parenthetical (Surg) denotes fellowship obtained through its surgical faculty. It is the college in Australia whose training is built specifically around cosmetic medicine and surgery, and fellowship is earned through a structured program of training, examinations and supervised operating in cosmetic settings. Dr Nara holds FACCSM(Surg).
It sits outside the specialist registration system, which is worth knowing simply because the two are easy to confuse. AHPRA recognises a defined set of qualifications for specialist registration, and a fellowship of this college is not among them, so it is not shown on the register as a specialty and does not carry the protected title of surgeon. That is a statement about how the register is structured rather than about the training behind the letters.
The practical point is that letters after a name and registration type are separate things, and the register is what settles the second. Read both.
10At the consultation
Questions worth asking —
once you are in the room.
The register tells you what a practitioner is registered to do. It does not tell you how often they do the particular operation you are considering, or how it goes when it does not go to plan. Those answers come from asking.
- 01What is your registration type, and does your entry carry any conditions or undertakings?
- 02Where did you train for this specific procedure, and over what period?
- 03How many of this operation do you perform in a year?
- 04What are your rates of complication and revision surgery for it?
- 05Who is your anaesthetist, and what are their qualifications?
- 06If I want a second opinion, who would you suggest I see?
How a question is received is itself information. A practitioner who is comfortable being asked about complication rates is generally comfortable discussing complications later, which is when it matters. The full sequence a patient is entitled to before any cosmetic operation, including the referral, the two consultations and the seven-day cooling-off period, is set out in our companion article on consultations and the cooling-off period.
11Frequently asked questions
Questions patients —
actually ask.
What is the AHPRA register, and is it really free?
It is the national public record of every registered health practitioner in Australia, maintained by the Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency across 16 regulated professions. It is free, needs no account, and is searchable by anyone. Checking it before a first consultation takes about a minute, and it is the single most useful thing a patient can do before booking anything.
Can anyone in Australia call themselves a surgeon?
No. Under the National Law, "surgeon" is a protected title for medical practitioners. It may only be used by a doctor who holds specialist registration in surgery, obstetrics and gynaecology, or ophthalmology. That protection extends to compound forms of the title. A doctor with general registration cannot lawfully use it, however many procedures they perform, and however long they have performed them.
So what does the general registration on a doctor's entry actually mean?
It means the practitioner has met the requirements to practise medicine in Australia without supervision. It is the ordinary registration type for a doctor and is not a lesser status in itself. What it does not do is indicate training in any particular field. General registration is the same field whether a doctor works in general practice, in emergency medicine, or in cosmetic medicine, so it tells you the practitioner is registered and tells you nothing at all about the procedure you are considering. That is what the questions at consultation are for.
What is the cosmetic surgery endorsement?
It is a mechanism, introduced as part of the cosmetic surgery reforms, for the public register to show that a doctor has completed training in cosmetic surgery assessed against standards set by the Australian Medical Council and approved by the Medical Board of Australia. The accreditation standards and the registration standard have been approved, and training providers may apply to have their programs accredited. A doctor who completes an accredited program can then apply to have the endorsement recorded on their registration. An endorsement does not confer the protected title of surgeon, which remains tied to specialist registration.
What is FACCSM(Surg)?
FACCSM stands for Fellow of the Australasian College of Cosmetic Surgery and Medicine, the college in Australia whose training is built specifically around cosmetic medicine and surgery. Fellowship is earned through a structured program of training, examinations and supervised operating, and the (Surg) denotes fellowship through its surgical faculty. It sits outside the specialist registration system, so it is not shown on the AHPRA register as a specialty and does not carry the protected title of surgeon. Dr Nara holds FACCSM(Surg) alongside his general registration, which is why this site refers to him as a cosmetic doctor.
The entry has a condition on it. Is that a red flag?
It is a flag, and it deserves a question rather than an assumption. Conditions are placed on registration for a range of reasons, and they vary widely in seriousness. The register states what the condition is. The reasonable thing to do is read it and, if it relates to the procedure you are considering, ask the practitioner about it directly and note how the question is received.
Should I check the anaesthetist as well?
Yes, and most patients do not think to. The anaesthetist is a separate practitioner, billing separately, with their own entry on the same register. For an operation under general anaesthesia their training and registration are directly relevant to your safety, so it is reasonable to ask who they will be and to look them up.
What if I have a concern about a practitioner?
Anyone may raise a concern about a registered practitioner with AHPRA, and you do not need to have been their patient. Concerns about advertising, including the use of protected titles, may also be raised. Our own complaints process is published, and raising a concern with us does not affect your care.
12Read the sources yourself
Primary sources —
all publicly available.
- Register of practitioners, AHPRA. The register itself, searchable by name or registration number.
- Types of registration, Medical Board of Australia. The source for the six registration types described above.
- Thinking about having cosmetic surgery?, AHPRA cosmetic surgery hub. Includes AHPRA's own advice on checking registration and protected titles.
- About the cosmetic surgery endorsement, AHPRA. What the endorsement is and where it sits.
- Guidelines for registered medical practitioners who perform cosmetic surgery and procedures, Medical Board of Australia, effective 1 July 2023.
13Our own entry
What you will find —
if you look us up.
Dr Kishen Nara holds MBBS from Monash University and FACCSM(Surg) through the Australasian College of Cosmetic Surgery and Medicine. On the AHPRA register he holds general registration as a medical practitioner, number MED0001201549, which is the registration type his qualifications sit under and the reason this site describes him as a cosmetic doctor rather than using the protected title of surgeon.
Consultations are held in Chadstone in Melbourne, in Cooee in Tasmania and in Stepney in South Australia, with surgery performed at our accredited Melbourne theatre. You can read more about the practice and the team, or begin a confidential enquiry when you are ready. A referral from your usual GP is required before a first consultation.
14About the practitioner
Dr Kishen
Nara.
Dr Kishen Nara is a registered medical practitioner. He sees patients across Melbourne, Tasmania and Adelaide. The team at RevAesthetic includes practice manager Cate, Patient Liaison Jenny, and registered nurses, all involved in supporting your enquiry.
- MBBSBachelor of Medicine, Bachelor of Surgery (Monash University)
- FACCSM(Surg)Surgical Fellow, Australasian College of Cosmetic Surgery and Medicine
- AHPRARegistered medical practitioner, General Registration MED0001201549
15Continue reading
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Disclaimer: All cosmetic procedures have inherent potential risks and complications. We encourage you to seek a second opinion from a qualified medical professional before any procedure. Material on this page is educational in nature and is not generalisable — outcomes vary significantly between patients depending on genetic composition, medical history and individual circumstances. This page summarises publicly available regulatory information and is not legal advice. Dr Kishen Nara — MBBS, FACCSM(Surg), AHPRA Registration MED0001201549. General Registration.