Tuesday, February 20, 2007

The success of your surgery could depend on your surgeons video skills


If you’re heading in for surgery over the next little while, there are perhaps a few questions you should be asking of your surgeon.

Never mind things like recovery times, danger factor and his or her experience with the procedures.

What you need to know is how good he or she is at computer games, what the best score ever was and how fast can he or she navigate the different levels without losing points?

A study at a New York hospital examined a total of 33 surgeons. Among the findings was that, nine of the doctors who had at some point played video games at least three hours per week made 37 percent fewer errors, performed 27 percent faster, and scored 42 percent better in the test of surgical skills than the 15 surgeons who had never played video games before.

No word was given as to what kind of games the surgeons played to increase their motor skills, but we can only assume it was a game that involved extra lives.

But for parents who dream of a life in medicine for their young ones, a word of advice. The study does not indicate that getting a head start on video games will guarantee success at med school.

In fact, a recent study from 2004 shows 94 percent of American kids played video games for an average of nine hours a week. Though the obsession comes with drawbacks as game-playing has been linked to a lack of exercise, a certain amount of aggressive behavior and poor school grades which of course will mean no admission to medical school.

Maybe use the video game as the carrot after the stick, study hard in your formative years and play your way through university and your working career.

No comments: