From a surgeon to a master surgeon Lau W.Y.Faculty of Medicine, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Prince of Wales Hospital, Shatin, Hong Kong SAR, China Abstract Facing a surgical specialist after he has finished with his surgical training are two roads that he can choose to follow.If he chooses to follow the road of the evils, he can arrive at one of the following two points:- a bad doctor or a poor doctor.A bad doctor is someone who uses his professional knowledge or skills to cheat or to take advantage of his patients. Essentially, this is a bad doctor doing bad things with evil intention.A poor doctor is a doctor who is poor in knowledge or skills. The doctor’s intention might be good but because he is applying outdated knowledge or skills in treating his patients, his patients suffer. On the other hand, the doctor can choose to follow the road of the good, but he needs to spend efforts in updating his knowledge and skills by doing continuing medical education and auditing. Whether at the end this doctor becomes a qualified surgical specialist or a good surgical specialist would depend on how much efforts he has spent, and how talented he is.Without research, a good surgical specialist can never become a master surgeon. If a surgeon just performs operations, the number of patients who can benefit from him is limited. However, if the surgeon can, through his research, come up with a new knowledge or a new treatment which other surgeons can follow, the number of patients who can benefit would be many folds more.A master of the master surgeons is someone who comes up with a revolutionary idea in surgery that changes the conventional thinking. He also has to process the high ethics and personality that everybody would admire.