Read article
The Power of Skills #1
We were very excited to hear that Brighton got its first Michelin star in nearly 50 years.
Insights
The Power of Skills #2
Some of the skills that matter most in surgery may be developed somewhere unexpected.
Research has found that surgeons who regularly play video games perform better on laparoscopic surgical simulations.
Surgeons who played video games more than three hours per week were found to
- Make 37% fewer errors
- Complete procedures 27% faster
- Achieve significantly higher overall performance scores
Minimally invasive surgery relies heavily on skills such as
- fine motor control
- hand-eye coordination
- spatial reasoning
- interpreting complex visual information quickly
What is not important for predicting success of surgeons
- A prestigious university
- The right connections
- A perfect CV
- A traditional career path
- Coming from a family of doctors
These are the same underlying skills developed through many types of gaming.
Of course, gaming alone doesn't make someone a surgeon, but it does highlight something important.....skills are developed in many different environments.
Qualifications in the right context can be valuable, but they rarely capture the full range of skills someone might bring.
If we only look at traditional academic signals, we may miss people who have already developed relevant skills somewhere else.
Sport.
Gaming.
Hobbies.
Work experience.
Life experience.
Across many professions, the real differentiator is often how effectively someone can apply the right skills in context, therefore, if we know which skills matter most for performance, why don't we start by looking for those skills first?
...and for those parents whose kids are spending lots of time gaming, they may very well be developing skills essential to the working world.
Rosser, J. C., Lynch, P. J., Cuddihy, L., Gentile, D. A., Klonsky, J., & Merrell, R. (2007). The impact of video games on training surgeons in the 21st century. Archives of Surgery, 142(2), 181–186.