College Students Who Play Video Games Better Than Medical Residents at Handling Virtual Surgical Tools

A new study conducted by researchers at University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston found that high school and college students who spent at least two hours a day playing video games were better at handling virtual surgery tools compared to medical residents. Researchers led by Dr Sami Kilic recruited a group of college and high school video gamers and pitted them against medical residents from the university. The researchers measured the performance of both the groups in 20 different skills and 32 different teaching steps and found that those who play video games regularly performed marginally better in both the categories.

In fact the surgical skills of some of the students were found to be better compared to the residents, though when asked to perform non-assisted laparoscopic surgery, the medical residents did manage to comfortably outperform the students.

Dr Kilic said that the findings suggest that there is a need to rethink the best way to teach current generation of medical students who are technologically savvy. “Most physicians in practice today never learned robotic surgery in medical school. However, as we see students with enhanced visual-spatial experience and hand-eye coordination that are a result of the technologically-savvy world they are immersed in, we should rethink how best to teach this generation”, he said.

Source-Medindia