There have been numerous stories about how the Wii has been used to help rehab and geriatric patients recover physical mobility. Now it has been revealed that the Wii may be helping the doctors as well.
LiveScience recently reported that eight undisclosed surgical trainees took an hour to play with Nintendo Wii games before taking a laparoscopic surgery test. The test involved a virtual tool that kept track of the doctors’ movements and graded them for accuracy and smoothness of those movements. When the grades came back in, they discovered this:
The Wii-playing residents scored 48 percent higher than others without the warm-up with the Wii, working faster and more accurately.
In the same article, it also mentions that doctors at New York-Presbyterian Hospital and Weill Cornell Medical Center are using modified Wiis to help deal with their computerized copies of X-Ray and MRI images:
Instead of spending hours at a time navigating through pictures using basic keyboard and mouse clicks, which can lead to repetitive motion injuries such as carpal tunnel syndrome, one cycles through scans with the Wii by just rotating the wrist.
This is quite amazing to hear. People may scoff at the Wii’s versatility beyond being just a game console but they may think twice if it means having a doctor with a healthy wrist that can perform needed surgery better.
