Plastic Surgery Training: A Privilege and Honor

265 Editorial In this day and age, every aspect of society has already been com­ mercialized. It seems that anything can be regarded as a commo­ dity. Due to influences from many directions, medical practice has not been an exception, and in fact, it is sometimes a prime example of such commercialism. Physicians' open commercial advertising has gone beyond a social problem to become a me­ dia extravaganza. Many people have criticized these phenomena as if the medical doctors are the only group responsible. Even most physicians blame plastic surgeons as if we have committed the original sin. Because we must deal with underpayment from what the national health system does not cover and our work is a hot­button social issue, we have received the most attention. The more serious problem is that even we plastic surgeons often censure each other. Aesthetic surgery profits from the ideology of a society that serves only vanity, youthfulness, and personal success—one that is losing sight of real values that can go beyond the immedi­ ate desires of patients. This is a social trend that no one can suc­ cessfully resist. However, we find ourselves in this current situa­ tion and have a certain responsibility to try to reduce or reverse this vicious cycle; the huge expense for marketing, along with corrupt brokers for foreign patients, hiring non­specialist doc­ tors, allocating little time for developing doctor­patient relation­ ships, and many other factors together result in low­priced sur­ gery that can never match our professional standards. These con­ flicts among physicians go beyond popular ethical issues. In light of all these issues, together with the disgraceful challenge of the prevalence of aesthetic surgeons without board certification in the specialty, we may assess the current situation as worsening and worry about losing our collective self­respect and eventually our professional identity. Can ethics education help us to escape from this situation? We know that we cannot change the world; however, there may be something we have missed or neglected—something within our power to change, that is, our own professionalism. Perhaps there is some area of deficiency in plastic surgery training in pro­ fessionalism and ethics. And this is not the ordinary need for professionalism common to other occupations; it is more sig­ nificant and urgent. The surgeons who are training our residents must take their professional commitment seriously and show genuine care for both formal training and …