New research conditionally supports gaming for surgeon trainees

These days, you may actually see surgeons-in-training tracing five-pointed stars on their TV screens with their Wiimotes. Why? Well, a study conducted by Arizona“>Mark Marshall, director of simulation and training at the Banner Good Samaritan Medical Centre in Phoenix, Arizona, suggests that under certain conditions, gaming can improve the hand dexterity needed by surgeons.

If you want to know what we’re talking about, head on over to the full article after the jump.

Will Wii games like Trauma Center: New Blood make people good doctors? Not necessarily, but they may help the boost the hand dexterity required of trainee surgeons. This is according to a study conducted by Arizona“>Mark Marshall, director of simulation and training at the Banner Good Samaritan Medical Centre in Phoenix, Arizona.

Marshall and his team of researchers asked eight trainee surgeons to play Nintendo Wii games before proceeding with virtual reality (VR) surgery. He then recorded the precision of each trainee’s hand movements. Marshall and company discovered that the students scored 48% better in practice sessions held after having played games than those who did not have the benefit of playing Wii games beforehand.

Marshall’s study wasn’t the first study to reveal how playing video games can help surgeons hone their scalpel skills – a previous study conducted at the Beth Israel Medical Center in New York resulted in similar findings.

Marshall’s study, however, cautioned that not all Wii games are conducive to good surgical training. Focusing on particular exercises remains the key to doing well in a real operation later on. As Marshall’s fellow researcher, Kanav Kohel, put it:

You don’t gain a lot from swinging an imaginary tennis racket. The whole point about surgery is to execute small, finely controlled movements with your hands, and that is exactly what you get with the Wii.