Play Wii, Become a Better Surgeon

[wraggster]

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 (http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2013/02/27/173076773/nintendo-wii-helped-budding-surgeons-move-to-head-of-the-class) for an hour a day, five days a week, for four weeks resulting in 'statistically better' performance than a control group for laparoscopic skills (http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0057372). 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.

http://games.slashdot.org/story/13/03/01/0259213/play-wii-become-a-better-surgeon