A Florida-licensed esthetician (Ch. 477) can perform non-medical skin care — facials, superficial exfoliation, superficial cosmetic peels, extractions, and cosmetic skin-care services. Estheticians generally cannot inject, prescribe, perform medical-grade (deeper) chemical peels, operate medical lasers, or perform medical-depth microneedling. Those are the practice of medicine and belong to physicians or properly supervised clinicians.
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What is inside a Florida esthetician’s scope?
Cosmetic, non-invasive skin care that does not penetrate the living skin in a medical way is generally within an esthetician’s license — the surface-level services that anchor most spa menus.
What is outside a Florida esthetician’s scope?
Injectables, prescription products, medical lasers, medical-depth peels, and microneedling that penetrates into the dermis are not esthetician services. Assigning them to estheticians is one of the most common enforcement and patient-safety issues in aesthetics.
How are the gray areas between esthetician and medical services handled?
Devices and peel depths sit on a spectrum. The medical director’s job is to draw clear lines — which services each staff member may perform, at what depth or setting, and under what supervision — and to document them, rather than leaving staff to guess.
Owner takeaway
Confirm specific procedures with the Board of Cosmetology, the Board of Medicine/Nursing, and counsel. Assigning medical acts to an esthetician is a scope violation regardless of training certificates.