Doctor FAQs

• I want patient inquiries to be sent to my office manager
• How do I start answering questions?
• What are the guidelines for answering questions?
• I need to remove a photo or edit a caption that I've posted on my profile
• Why don't I see the changes that I've made to my profile immediately?
• I can't change my board certification or my specialty. How do I fix this?

I want patient inquiries to be sent to my office manager.

You can choose to send your patient inquiries to any email address you'd like. To make this change. just go to "Edit my profile" and under email address, enter the email address where you'd like patient inquiries sent.

How do I start answering questions?

The first step is to go to "Edit my profile" and make sure that you have selected all the procedures that you offer, because we make questions available to you based on the treatments you select. 
If any treatments are added, you should see your changes within one business day.

Once you have listed your treatments, there are two ways to answer questions on our site. You can go to your dashboard and go to "Answer questions now" in the Q&A section. Just click on a topic and a list of questions will appear on the page.

You can also sign up for questions by email. Just go to the "Subscriptions" section in your user account and tell us what topics you're interested in and how often you'd like to receive emails. When you click on a question from one of our emails, we will automatically sign you into our site and take you to the answer page.

What are the guidelines for answering questions?

The three main guidelines are:

1. Every answer must be educational. Please answer the question and refrain from overt marketing or self-promotion.
2. Each answer must be original and your own.
3. Please refrain from listing your practice information, phone number, website or signature. Users can click to your profile to obtain this information. Self-promotion will actually decrease your credibility when answering questions.

You can find a complete list of guidelines here. The sooner that a new doctor complies with our guidelines, the sooner we can promote them to "autopublish" so that their answers are published immediately.

I need to remove a photo or edit a caption that I've posted on RealSelf.com

Please send an email to admin@realself.com and send us the link to the photo you'd like to remove/edit. We will promptly make the changes.

Why don't I see the changes that I've made to my profile immediately?

Our admin team on RealSelf reviews your changes to make sure that they comply with our guidelines. You should see your changes within one business day.

I can't change my board certification or my specialty. How do I fix this?

We verify the board certification of every doctor who is on our site, and board certification is tied to the specialty listed on your profile. Therefore, any changes to this aspect of a doctor's profile must go through our admin team. If our information is incorrect, send an email to admin@realself.com and we'd be happy to correct it.