Trooper

http://www.playfuls.com/news_004874_...c_Surgeon.html


So next time you have surgery ask him if he is a gamer. Him/her being a Level 70 paladin could mean the difference between life or death.

icky

Yes, because if he is, he is likely working on about 4 hours of sleep!

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Trooper

good point. But then again most doctors average that amount of sleep anyways. So now he is tired, but has better reflexes

Hambergler

I worked in surgery 10 years. From what I have seen in the OR, I have no idea how the public chooses good surgeons. There are no checks or professional critique after they get out of medical school. 90% are so incompetent, I wouldn't let them squish a pimple, and the public is oblivious. Most people choose surgeons based on another doctors recommendation, but the referring doc has never been in the operating room with their recommendation. And is out of the referring docs scope of practice to eventuate the end result. End of rant-
Getting back to the post, the few surgeons I know who are tech literate or are gamers are great surgeons. Outside of knowing someone that actually watches them work. If your doc is tearing it up on BF2, I would have to agree that he is probably a decent surgeon.

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sc1ence

This is a quasi experimental study. The classic error here is to attribute causality to videogame playing. Thus, the reader comes away thinking that playing video games improves their performance in surgery. It could very well be that being really good laparoscopy surgeons leads people to play more video games. The two variables are related, but to say one caused another is wrongheaded. More likely is that there is some third variable such as manual dexterity that makes people enjoy playing video games and also excelent surgeons.

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SmokingTarpan

I looked at it from the simple standpoint of increased hand-eye coordination coming from playing from video games, rather than video games directly increase your surgical ability. Manual dexterity does play a big role, but you definitely need to have your fingers and eyes in sync when you're cutting or stitching.

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Zephyr

Tell me one of you has played Trauma Center: Second Opinion on the Wii?
That's a damn good surgery sim, fun game too.

It wouldn't surprise me that constantly training yourself with more precise motions, whether it be by mouse or wiimote, would transfer over well into surgical hand-eye coordination.
-Zephyr

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War.mongeR1

I saw a similar story on AFN TV (american forces network) a couple years ago. The Air Force once trained students who were learning laproscopic surgery with a simulator. I believe they split up the students. They made half the students play Super Monkey Ball for the gamecube before doing the simulated surgery. The other half didn't. The group who played the game outperformed the non-players by quite a huge margin. They took right to the surgery like it was nothing. Pretty neat to see. I'll try and find a link.

Arf

Well it's good to know that if I go under the knife my surgeon could be largely incompetent and his training less effective then a game of Super Monkey Ball. This is by far the most reasuring thread ever.

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Spyder

That's a hell of a fun game. One of the best Wii games available atm.

But I'd have to agree. Gaming is a repetative hand-eye excercise. So it would make sense to me that if you play a lot of particularily PC (or Wii I suppose) games, you would see an increase in ability in a hand-eye related job. That's not to say that H-E is the only factor I'd want in my surgeon, though.

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SmokingTarpan

Heh, people in general seem to be under the impression that doctors and surgeons are just these awesome, elite fixing machines. I wish that were the case, but sadly, it's not. This isn't to say that I want any old schmoe from the street cutting me open, but mistakes and bad things happen.

I was a vet assistant for several years when I was younger, and I got to help in the surgeries. One night the best vet that we had needed to operate on a dog to put pins in a broken leg. I had helped on several of these types of operations before, and I knew they were lengthy processes. I had other things to do that night, so I simply helped them set up and went to treat other animals. About 10min later I come back and they're finishing up. I said "wow, that was fast". The vet said, "yep. now we get to start again". Turns out they had cut open the wrong leg all the way down to the bone before they realized the mistake.

Now that others have ruined your view on doctors, I'm glad to have also ruined your outlook on vets. :P

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icky

Who told you that? It certainly isn't true where I come from.

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Ferris Bueller

I 1000% agree with hambergler here. Yes, that's one-thousand percent. I'm currently and ICU nurse, but I have been an OR nurse and about 75% of the time, I knew more about the particular proceedure and about medicine overall than the surgeon that was in the OR with me. I dont trust most surgeons. If I havent worked with them in the OR and had their competency proven to me firsthand. Either that, or i've seen their record and they have a strong reputation. If we have any surgeons out there, no offense, but I dont trust your lot.

And Icky/Trooper: The amount of sleep depends entirely on the person, position and schedule. I've had times that I've been able to get a cool 40 hours of sleep if I so desired and still had enough time to be up, go grab a nice meal and then slowly take the scenic route to the hospital before work. Other times I've gone 4 days sans sleep because I only had a 2 hour break between back to back to back to back to back shifts and HAD to eat. Most times you can average between 6-8 hours of sleep if you have a heavy workload.

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