Going under the knife might be uncertain in the future

Good read from Intellectual Takeout: LINK

Whether it’s for something as serious as cancer or as routine as a kidney stone, no one likes to hear that they have to go under the surgical knife. But such unhappy news is often lightened once a patient has the chance to talk to the surgeon and realize that he is in good, capable hands.

Unfortunately, those good, capable, surgery-performing hands may be an increasing rarity in the years ahead. According to Roger Kneebone, a London professor of surgical education, the last several years have seen a decided change in the abilities of medical students: they are having greater difficulty working with their hands.

Kneebone goes on to imply that skills learned in shop class, home economics, or other more extra-curricular courses have been thrown out of school with unforeseen consequences:

“We are talking about the ability to do things with your hands, with tools, cutting things out and putting things together … which is really important in order to do the right thing either with operations, or with experiments. You need to understand how hard you can pull things before you do damage to them or how quickly you can do things with them before they change in some way.”

Such skills have often been replaced by virtual reality games and activities performed on screens. These activities, while realistic, are no substitute for actual hands-on experience, explains Kneebone, for real-world experience broadens understanding and spatial awareness.