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The present approach to the challenge of preparing doctors for rural surgery is to compile a list of essential procedures to be practised until competent. It is difficult to finalise such a list and to provide the necessary practice within a reasonable time frame. It is argued that skills and procedures are not interchangeable terms and that a more analytic approach to the learning process is needed. To lay a foundation of "knife and fork" (psychomotor) skills, to be able to access procedural anatomy, and to acquire the cognitive skill of imprinting surgical procedures are sounder ways of preparing for rural surgery than the practising by rote of specified procedures. The skill of map reading is an analogy that may aid understanding of this opinion.