On 3 July 2026 the College of Nurses of Ontario published a new Aesthetic Services practice guideline. Most of the conversation about it has been clinical. The part almost nobody is talking about is the advertising section, and it changes how a lot of injectors are currently marketing themselves.
Written by Vanessa Kay, founder of The Kay Media. Seven years running digital marketing for Fortune 500 brands, then 25+ injectors and clinics scaled across Toronto and Canada, with a best client month north of $200k.
We run the marketing for injector-led practices in Ontario, so this guideline lands on our own desk before it lands on yours. Every ad, landing page and offer we operate for Ontario clients is being reviewed against it right now. What follows is what we found reading the document itself, and what we are changing because of it.
Sourced from the CNO guideline and news release directly, not from summaries. Every requirement below links to the paragraph it comes from so you can check it yourself.
If you inject in Ontario, you have probably seen this guideline mentioned in a group chat by now. What follows is a plain-English read of the advertising and title sections, written from a marketing point of view rather than a clinical one, with links to the source so you can check every line yourself.
CNO describes aesthetics as one of the fastest growing areas of practice in the profession. The new guideline sets out expectations across seven areas, and one of them is stated plainly as “using ethical advertising by nurses and employers.” That is the part with commercial consequences.
Nothing here is a new law invented by the College. Much of the advertising section points at rules that already existed, including Canada’s Food and Drugs Regulations. What the guideline does is put them in one place and make clear that nurses are accountable for them.
The guideline says advertisements must be truthful, professional and ethical, and it defines each one:
Accurate and factual. It must not mislead the audience or use sensational claims, and the information must be verifiable.
It must maintain the integrity of the profession and not erode public confidence in nurses or in nursing.
Provide all relevant information, and avoid comparative statements or guaranteeing the success of a treatment or product.
“Avoid comparative statements” is worth sitting with. A lot of aesthetic marketing is built on being better than the clinic down the road.
This is the line that has the biggest effect on how injectors currently advertise. The guideline says nurses must not reference, directly or indirectly, the therapeutic use or benefits of specific prescription drugs, and it points to Section C.01.044 of Canada’s Food and Drugs Regulations, which restricts advertising prescription drugs to consumers to name, price and quantity.
The guideline then spells out what that captures:
Read that list against a typical injector’s feed. Before-and-afters, treatment videos and results testimonials are the format most accounts are built on. The restriction is tied to prescription drug promotion specifically, which is why it lands so hard in this niche.
Where images or video are used, the guideline requires the client’s informed consent, and says the media must be the result of the work of the nurse associated with the advertisement. It also states the media must not be digitally enhanced, giving photoshopping and retouching as the examples.
Stock results, borrowed content and a smoothing filter are all addressed by that single sentence.
When advertising aesthetic services, the guideline says nurses must include their full name, the professional designation as noted on CNO’s public register, and their role on the care team. It adds that advertising should also include the name of the nurse’s authorizing provider or medical director, so clients can see who is accountable.
The guideline is direct about job titles. Clients are entitled to know who is providing their care, and whatever a workplace calls a role, nurses must identify themselves with their full name and the designation matching their registration status. Under the Nursing Act, 1991, “nurse,” “Nurse Practitioner,” “Registered Nurse” and “Registered Practical Nurse” are the protected titles.
It also flags descriptive words. The guideline gives “expert” and “master” as examples of adjectives that may mislead the public about a nurse’s level of qualification and experience. Those words appear in a lot of bios and ad headlines.
The instinct will be to panic and delete everything. That is not the read. The guideline restricts a specific set of tactics, mostly the ones tied to promoting prescription drugs to consumers. Plenty of what actually drives bookings is untouched.
Worth noting for anyone who does not control their own marketing: the guideline recognises that some nurses are employees, and says they are still accountable to advocate for responsible advertising and to document the steps they took when they raise concerns.
We market injector-led practices for a living, so this guideline lands on our desk as work rather than as commentary. Here is what is actually changing in the accounts we run, in case it is useful.
Most aesthetic ads are a result with a price attached. Take the result out and there is nothing left, which is why the guideline feels existential to so many accounts. The ads that survive it are the ones where the offer was doing the work in the first place: what happens at the consult, what it costs, what you do if it is not right for them, how quickly they can be seen.
We build the offer before we spend a dollar on traffic, and that ordering is the reason this guideline changes our creative far less than it changes most feeds. When your ad never depended on a drug’s outcome, there is not much to remove.
A testimonial about a therapeutic effect is restricted. A client describing how the consult felt, how carefully she was assessed, and how she was treated when she asked a nervous question is not. The second one converts better anyway, because the person reading it is nervous too.
So the brief changes. We stop asking clients to talk about how they look and start asking what nearly stopped them booking, and what happened instead. Grace’s story is that kind of proof. Nothing in it turns on a product.
If you cannot advertise the outcome, advertise the judgement. Who assesses you. What they check. Why they might tell you no. For an injector with real clinical standards, this rule is a gift, because it moves the competition from who has the best photo editor to who is visibly the safer pair of hands.
Most aesthetic marketing in this province leans on exactly the tactics that just got restricted. If your competitors keep running before-and-afters and results testimonials, the gap is not going to be who has the flashiest feed. It will be who can fill a calendar without them.
That is a harder marketing problem, and it is a better one to have, because it is built on the offer, the consult and the follow-up rather than on borrowed proof. It is also the problem we already solve. Vanessa Kay spent seven years in Fortune 500 marketing before building this agency around aesthetics, and the system we run for injectors was built on offers and demand rather than on results imagery, well before this guideline existed.
If you are rebuilding your marketing around this, that is the work we do. We help injectors and clinic owners across Ontario and Canada build the offer, run the ads and keep the calendar full, without relying on the tactics this guideline restricts.
Start here: nurse injector marketing in Toronto, med spa marketing in Toronto, or aesthetic clinic marketing. The full playbook is in our med spa marketing guide, and you can talk to us here.
Sources: College of Nurses of Ontario, Aesthetic Services practice guideline (published 3 July 2026) and the accompanying CNO news release. Quotations of requirements are drawn from the guideline’s Advertising and “Care team, roles and title use” sections. This summary is written for marketing purposes and is not legal or regulatory advice.
