Video Game Warm Up May Reduce Surgical Error
A study of surgeons and video gaming conducted by James “Butch” Rosser, Jr. and his team at Beth Israel Medical Center in New York in conjunction with The National Institute on Media and the Family revealed that 20 minutes of warming up by playing video games before operating may reduce surgical error. The study also confirmed earlier research showing a significant correlation between past experience with video games and proficiency at laparoscopic surgical drills.
The study pool contained over 300 surgeons. Highlighted findings included:
• That demonstrated skill on video games is a compellingly strong predictor of advanced laparoscopic surgical drill skills, when compared with clinical training, number of laparoscopic surgeries performed, knowledge of laparoscopic surgical techniques, and demonstrated laparoscopic suturing skill.
• There is likely to be a great deal of transfer of learning from certain types of video games to surgical skill. However, the mechanisms of learning and transfer have yet to be discovered.
• Surgeons who played video games immediately prior to a Cobra Rope drill (the drill uses laparoscopic tools to move along a piece of string, clamping it at marked intervals) were significantly faster on their first attempt at the Cobra Rope, and were significantly faster overall across all 10 trials.
• In general, the surgeons who had played the video games prior to the drill started better and stayed better than the surgeons who had not played video games immediately prior to the drill.
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