Scholastic Impact of Video-Gaming

Children dreaming of becoming brilliant surgeons, hear the good news. Video-gaming could well become one of the elective courses, if not one of the core courses, in medical schools of the near future.

In a brief presentation at the Beth Israel Center in the United States, Dr. James C. Rosser, an associate professor at the Department of Laparoscopic Surgery, discussed a study aptly titled, “Are Video Game Players Better at Laparoscopic Surgery Tasks?” Leading his team of other investigators from equally distinguished Universities across the US, Dr. Rossier put forth several interesting findings of their study.

Video-gaming has been notoriously written off in previous researches on account of its established correlation with decreased academic performance, decreased pro-social behavior as well as aggressive thoughts, feelings, and behavior. It is likewise correlated with smoking, obesity and a string of physiological stimulations. Such notoriety is slightly diminished by the research team’s hypothesis.

Alternatively, some earlier studies which evaluated psychomotor skills vis-à-vis video game activity which demonstrated that “video-gamers showed superior eye-hand coordination, more rapid reaction time, superior spatial visualization and increased capacity for visual attention and spatial distribution.” Taking on the results of previous studies, the team suggested that surgeons who had previously played video games would have better skills in a standardized laparoscopy and suturing program, thus establishing a correlation between playing video games and improved performance in the said program.

After carefully controlling other factors, including the amount of time spent in playing video games, as well as the content, form and game mechanics, their results indicate that there could be a good side to video gaming chronicles. “Video game skill and past experience with video games are significant predictors of laparoscopic skills and suturing capability after controlling for sex, years of medical training and number of laparoscopic cases performed (p <0.01),” Dr. Rosser explained.

The study population included 33 surgeons and the methodology was composed of three elements, namely the questionnaire, the laparoscopic skill and suturing program (top gun), and the video game tasks. The first one probed on the respondent demographics as well as their video gaming history and surgical specialty and experience and the number of laparoscopic surgeries they have handled. The program was composed of laparoscopic and suturing drills. Lastly, the video game elements were chosen based on perceived correlation with the aforesaid skills.

Performance of certain tasks has been shown to improve with video game simulators, as in driving skills and flying planes. Amidst the ever-increasing sales of video-games worldwide, side by side the cost-effectiveness of alternative training models and other accompanying advantages of simulation such as error prevention, and taking out ethical issues in using living subjects, using video game simulators in improving laparoscopic and suturing skills opens a more interesting field of practice for future physicians; and you would no longer be surprised when you find a surgeon in pre-op, playing Trauma Center (Nintendo game) to warm up before minor invasive surgical procedure.