16/09/2026
Over the last few months, I watched countless surgeries, including complex reconstruction, orthognathic surgery, TMJ arthroscopy, VSP, patient-specific implants, microvascular surgery, and many emerging techniques and technologies at Ninth Peopleâs Hospital, Shanghai.
But looking back, the most important lessons I brought home were not techniques.
One of my professors told me:
âYou are not here to gather skills. You are here to generate ideas.â
That stayed with me.
After more than a decade in surgery, my time in Shanghai made me rethink what it truly takes to become a surgeon.
1. Mentorship is irreplaceable.
Surgery cannot be learned entirely from textbooks, YouTube, courses, or even fellowships. It is more like learning music from a great master.
A mentor teaches what cannot always be written down: judgment, timing, tissue handling, discipline, and when to proceed or stop.
I have been fortunate to learn from my mentor Associate Professor Dr. Abdullah Al Masud Sir for more than 10 years, as well as from many other mentors. Shanghai made me appreciate the value of that mentorship even more.
You do not simply visit a great center and suddenly âlearn surgery.â You watch, assist, repeat, and gradually understand why a master performs the same step with the same meticulousness every day.
Eventually, those lessons become part of your own surgical thinking.
2. There is no shortcut to surgical skill.
Courses, technology, VSP, advanced instruments, and observing great surgeons can teach you a great dealâbut nothing replaces repetition.
What looks effortless in the hands of a master is often the result of performing the same fundamental steps thousands of times.
Excellence is repetition refined over years.
3. Surgery demands sacrifice.
I used to wonder whether I was sacrificing too much of my life and family time for surgery. Then I saw the extraordinary discipline and intensity with which surgeons in China work.
If you genuinely want to master surgery, you must give a significant part of yourself to itâyour time, concentration, energy, and years of your life.
4. Never let money become your reason for operating.
A surgeon deserves fair compensation for years of training, responsibility, and work. But money should never become the indication for surgery.
You operate because the patient needs it, because it is the right treatment, and because you have spent years mastering the craft required to perform it well.
There is a unique satisfaction in practicing a craft you have spent years learning.
The patient first. The craft second. Money should followânever lead.
5. Find your inner âChi.â
Yes, like Kung Fu Panda. đ But I mean it.
A surgeon needs inner calm. When you are at peace, you observe better. When you observe better, you understand better. And when you understand clearly, you execute better.
Before controlling your hands, learn to control your mind.
So yes, I returned from Shanghai having witnessed remarkable surgery and technology.
But what I brought back was something more fundamental:
Mentorship. Practice. Sacrifice. Inner calm. Purpose over money.
Technology will change. Techniques will change.
But these principles probably never will.
â Dr. Tasrif Ahmed
