Answering patient questions on Connect

The Ask a Surgeon feature is the continuation of our work to turn PlasticSurgery.org into a truly interactive patient community instead of just a one-way information stream. Allowing prospective patients to engage more directly with ASPS surgeons creates better-educated consumers and more visibility for our members.

As the name implies, Ask a Surgeon allows anyone with a question about plastic surgery to post a question, which can then be answered by any of our member surgeons. Here's how it works:

Questions

When a consumer asks a question, it will appear on the main questions page here. The most recently asked questions appear on this default view. If you select a procedure from the sidebar menu, you can see all the questions related to just that procedure.

You must be logged in to answer a question. You can use the login button that appears on this page to log in if you haven't done so already.

Opt-in for notifications

When you log in to your member dashboard, you will see an option for Ask a Surgeon in the menu under the My Info tab. Here, you can choose to receive an email notification every time a consumer posts a question. You do not have to opt in to email notifications to be able to answer questions. However, receiving email notifications increases the likelihood that you will be among the first surgeons to answer a particular question.

Under the Ask a Surgeon tab, you can choose to receive a digest of questions once per week, once per day, every few hours as they happen or not at all.

Answering a question

From the questions list, select any question to submit your answer. You can see from this list which questions do not have answers, or you can choose to add an additional comment to a question that has already been answered.

Once you have clicked on a question, type your answer in the box provided and click Submit. Your answer will appear publicly on PlasticSurgery.org along with your name and member photo. If you have a Connect profile, a link to your surgeon profile will also appear. Remember, your answer is not only for the person who asked the question, but anyone else reading who may have had the same question, so keep your answers clear, concise and professional. Answers are limited to 1000 characters and cannot contain outbound links except to official ASPS or government information. Outbound links to practice websites, blogs or YouTube will be removed.

Rate Ask a Surgeon

Once you submit an answer, you will be prompted with the option to rate your experience and leave a comment for our development team. Your feedback will help us as we continue to develop and make improvements to this feature.

Note: We are continually developing and making improvements to this feature. As updates are made to the platform, updates will be made to this guide.