Play Wii, Become a Better Surgeon 55
drew30319 writes "NPR reports that a team of researchers at the University of Rome required a group of surgical residents to play video games on a Nintendo Wii for an hour a day, five days a week, for four weeks resulting in 'statistically better' performance than a control group for laparoscopic skills. The study includes some interesting stats (e.g. while the control group showed a 10% improvement in accuracy, the Wii-playing group's accuracy improved by 83%). The study's authors add that '[t]he Nintendo Wii may be adopted in lower-budget Institutions or at home by younger surgeons to optimize their training on simulators before performing real procedures.'"
"Practicing hand/eye coord. makes you good at..." (Score:4, Interesting)
So, spending 5 hours a day practicing precision hand/eye coordination tasks... makes you better at work which requires precision hand/eye coordination tasks...
I suppose my question would be - how does playing a Wii game compare to another task which involves hand/eye coordination? e.g. sewing cross stitch, soldering electronic components, playing tennis ?
Would universities be better requiring medical students to play tennis each day or take up cross stitch than playing Wii? or doing work experience controlling those cameras that mole through sewerage pipes?