Surgeon Credits Video Games for his Effectiveness in the Field

A trainee surgeon thanks video games for his effeciency on the job. Attributing his dexterity, motor skills and cognitive abilities to Halo and other games.

Gaming is often subjected to criticism from external sources. Being blamed for inefficiency in the workplace or falling behind in academics (me). Often times, however, studies and other testimonies point to games as a positive addition to one’s life.

In this case, it was when Saied Froghi, a trainee surgeon, had video games to thank for his effectiveness on the job. Specifically giving Age of empires and Halo a shout-out.

Video games have been shown in studies to yield improvements in a person’s motor functions, cognitive abilities and most prominently, manual dexterity. Now, these attributes are very important to a surgeon.

Saied is one of many workers who acknowledged their current skill set to have a bit of a helping hand from his hours of gaming back in Med school. He went on to add that a bit of gaming would be a great warm-up exercise for surgeons. Seeing as how you can’t exactly risk warming up on a live patient. Froghi added:

“If you take the example of keyhole surgery, your eyes focus on a screen and your hands move synchronously with what you are doing. That’s a similar scenario to when you are playing football with a games console. Your hands know where the buttons are and how to rotate the instrument.”

Other surgeons also chimed in with their own experiences on how gaming improved their job lives and how good they were at them. Such as Rajin Chowdhury of the Sheffield teaching hospital. He also thanked video games for how dextrous he was in the field. Specifically his hand-eye coordination in procedures that used a screen.

“For example in an appendicectomy, because of the way the camera is inserted in the abdomen when you move it down [in the body] you move it up on the image. When I want to move right you have to move it left.”

A tweet from Paul Cowling also added in support:

Other comments under the thread also attributed better performance in bed being due to games. But don’t get me wrong, video games won’t literally just get you through life. Under no circumstance should you think that the surgeons were ONLY successful because of their gaming. They only credited some aspects of their work skills to the games they played. The most important parts of their current job status was the training, experience and education beforehand.

20 year old Chaotic Neutral. I love me some Gwent. Linking the flame is for pussies though. Also the true Mortal Kombatant that remains unbeaten. I love single player games with a compelling story and ...