After a month spent playing video games in addition to their usual training, 21 surgical residents performed laparoscopies with significantly improved accuracy and economy.

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While I was always partial to Nintendo Wii Bowling, my friends in high school were fond of a game called "Trauma Center." Simulating medical emergencies, it required them to use the controller in a quasi-realistic approximation of performing surgery (the magical "Healing Touch" was one of the game's less medically accurate aspects).

Would my friends' expertise at the game qualify them to perform actual surgeries? I wouldn't bet my anesthetized ass on it. Actual surgery, though, is becoming more and more like the games that imitate it. Surgeons manipulate robots and cameras to make their slices and dices more precise. A common example of this is the laparascope, which is used to perform minimally invasive, or "keyhole" surgeries in the abdomen.

With this revolution comes the need for a new set of skills: being able to manipulate instruments while following what's happening on a 2D monitor, instead of watching the 3D body in front of you.

"Play to Become a Surgeon" is the study that resulted when researchers at the University of Rome took the teaching opportunity presented by video games more seriously than have others before them. They introduced play as part of training for post-doc fellows in their first two years of residency, instructing them to use the Wii for an hour a day, five days a week.