Could playing with Nintendo’s Wii console improve the efficiency of surgeons? The first results of a study carried by the Banner Good Samaritan Hospital, in Phoenix, seem to indicate so.
The physicians enrolled in this study who regularly played on the console scored 48 percent higher on surgical control than their peers who didn’t.
“The surgeons develop an increased efficiency, less errors, more fluid movement—basically they’re just better,” Mark Smith, director of the hospital’s Simulation Education and Training Center, told The Guardian. Smith and his colleagues are carrying a study on 16 surgical residents evenly split in two groups; one gaming regularly, the other not.
Although previous studies had already concluded that surgeons who are gamers show better hand-to-eye coordination and dexterity than those who don’t play video games, Smith believes the Wii system allows physicians to improve these skills even faster, because the console’s motion-sensitive controller allows some games to require very precise hand movements, similar to those executed during surgery.
The hospital research team is now developing its own training games and they expect to be able to mass produce them in two years.—Maria José Viñas
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