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Surgeons Playing Wii to Train Reflexes

Aug. 4 1:22 PM by Lynxara

Remember way back when someone did a study that found that surgeons who played a lot of Kororinpa Marble Mania performed better in surgeries? As a result of this and similar research, it looks like resident surgeons at the Banner Good Samaritan Hospital in Phoenix, AZ are now required to play Wii games as part of their training. Unfortunately, the article doesn't make it clear which titles the residents are playing.

Check behind the cut for a particularly illuminating excerpt of the original article.

Q: What have you found that the Nintendo Wii can do for practicing surgeons and for people learning how to perform surgery?

Smith: One of the problems we've had over the years is we had no method to teach surgeons surgical skills without going into surgery. We now have simulators that help them develop those skills. The problem is they are incredibly expensive -- like a flight simulator for a pilot. This gives us a much less costly way to train these fine motor skills that the surgeons employ during surgery.

Q: Can a video game really help somebody improve as a surgeon?

Smith: We used cyber gloves which computerize hand movements of surgeons and we put those on surgeons. We have data on that. We put them on people playing the Wii. There is a very, very high correlation between the two and this is documented statistically.

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