SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
Surgery students spend so much time swiping on flat, two-dimensional screens that they are losing the ability to perform simple tasks necessary to conduct life-saving operations, such as stitching and sewing up patients. As a result, students have become less competent and confident in using their hands—leading to very high exam grades despite a lack of tactile knowledge.
Roger Kneebone, professor of surgical education at Imperial College, London, argues that two-dimensional flat screen activity is substituting for the direct experience of handling materials and developing physical skills. Such skills might once have been gained at school or at home, by cutting textiles, measuring ingredients, repairing something that’s broken, learning woodwork, or holding an instrument.
Kneebone now notices that medical students and trainee surgeons are not comfortable cutting or tying string because they don’t have practical experience developing and using these skills. He also mentioned that colleagues in various branches of medicine have made the same observation.
See also this BBC news item: Surgery Students ‘Losing Dexterity to Stitch Patients’.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by insanumingenium on Wednesday March 27 2019, @05:45PM (3 children)
Every generation complains about the next, and it is almost always wasted breath.
If they are really worried about knot tying skills, include a sewing or knot tying class in premed and on, this is a practical skill that is very easy to teach, and between undergrad, graduate, residency, they have years to build confidence and competence. Seriously, we don't teach children to intubate each other (unless you count opening capri-sun as practice), but they manage to teach med students how to do it pretty regularly.
To describe cell phone usage as simply "swiping on flat two dimensional screens" is a joke. You can't convince me that hitting arrays of sub 5mm buttons accurately, at high speed, often without looking, and without differentiating tactile feedback is indicative of a total lack of manual dexterity. And I would wager every one of these students do that daily, and possibly even while doing other intensive tasks like driving and sleeping through Kneebone's lectures.
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 27 2019, @06:06PM
True, we could have had a quality aristachu submission instead.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 27 2019, @09:21PM
Wtf are you talking about? I know med students, and live with a resident. In school they do practice boards of suture knots. There's a long chain that can quickly be pulled to release which in particular they have to do blind, upside down, etc in theory (and most do do this, they don't want to do it in a particular way for the first time on a patient!).
When they work on these boards it's painfully obvious that there are those who come to it easily and those who must work hard. I can attest that when they were working on these last year, the knitter was probably 5-10x the pace of most of the rest with a much more consistent result. I didn't think to survey the rest for guitar and piano or whatever.
So, N of ~12, variation is huge and thumbs are not moving needles, which is a different spatialization. Conclusion: their claim is plausible and your counter arguments are tangental (you think it's easy to teach, go look at the output of a drawing glass at the start and end and note that *some* folks don't really improve physical skills, only visualizing)
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Friday March 29 2019, @09:14PM
It is very easy to teach to people who have the basic fine motor skills already and all they have to learn is the specifics of hook needles, knot tying, etc.
Those fine motor skills are generally developed in childhood and if they're not, they're hard to pick up later.
I believe the point of the article is that kids today spend too much time with their devices and it's bad for their development of traditional skills.
Maybe if, instead of the broad easy swipe on a smooth flat screen, your phones and tablets required fine 3D manipulations to use them, those skills would not be fading from western society.
🌻🌻 [google.com]