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Video game skills could make surgery child’s play for doctors

Physician Practice Advisor, March 2, 2005

Golf on Wednesdays might have been a time-honored way for doctors to mellow out in the middle of a hard work week, but it's doubtful the game did much to enhance their medical skills. Replacing the nine-iron with a Playstation 2, however, might pay off in unexpected ways.

In a February 24 story, The New York Times profiled New York surgeon Dr. James Clarence Rosser Jr., of Beth Israel Medical Center, who swears by the video game as a method of improving the hand-eye coordination and dexterity required to be a successful surgeon. Rosser last year co-authored a study that found that surgeons who played at least three hours of video games a week were 27% faster and made 37% fewer errors that those who didn't play.

Today, Rosser keeps Xbox, PlayStation 2, and GameCube systems in the hospital so that he, and the physicians who take part in his Rosser Top Gun Laparoscopic Skills and Suturing Program, can loosen up their fingers and better develop their brains' understanding of how the movements of fingers on a joystick affect images on a video screen. Those are the same sort of skills, Rosser argues, that are directly applied to laparoscopic procedures.

Rosser believes that programs like his will result in new ways of training young physicians, who may have already gained a headstart on becoming brilliant surgeons by "wasting" all those hours playing "Mario Bros." and "Grand Theft Auto." "We're going all over the world training people, trying to give them the skills that seems like I was able to nurture with video games... trying to trick these doctors into learning new tricks," Rosser told The Times.

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