Hand-eye coordination needed to be a surgeon

[canucks_14]

Hi, I am an undergrad student looking to ask surgeon/ surgeon-students a question. In the movie Gifted Hands, one of Ben Carson's professors says "intelligence and dedication are the easy part, you also need incredible hand-eye coordination"

 

I was just wondering about the validity of this claim in the real world. Not sure if that quote is verbatim in Ben Carson's studies, or if they had a medical consultant working on the movie.

 

In any event, if this is true, then can this skill be acquired? What can you do to work on this skill? is this a particular requirement for being a surgeon? do they administer tests to evaluate this skill?

[NLengr]

Hi, I am an undergrad student looking to ask surgeon/ surgeon-students a question. In the movie Gifted Hands, one of Ben Carson's professors says "intelligence and dedication are the easy part, you also need incredible hand-eye coordination"

 

I was just wondering about the validity of this claim in the real world. Not sure if that quote is verbatim in Ben Carson's studies, or if they had a medical consultant working on the movie.

 

In any event, if this is true, then can this skill be acquired? What can you do to work on this skill? is this a particular requirement for being a surgeon? do they administer tests to evaluate this skill?

 

To quote one of my staff: "you can teach a monkey to operate. The hard part of surgery is knowing when not to operate".

 

Seriously, for most surgery, mostly anyone can do the physical work. It's the mental judgement stuff that's much harder.

[Renin]

As part of my general surgery rotation I was given the opportunity to do a simulation lab they use to train their general surgeons. There were these two prong things and you had to move a joy stick to control the prongs to do simulated procedures.

 

Let's just say I was the fastest done because I perforated all the patients and they all died.

 

My preceptor looked at the results and then looked at me and suggested maybe surgery is not for me.

[canucks_14]

As part of my general surgery rotation I was given the opportunity to do a simulation lab they use to train their general surgeons. There were these two prong things and you had to move a joy stick to control the prongs to do simulated procedures.

 

Let's just say I was the fastest done because I perforated all the patients and they all died.

 

My preceptor looked at the results and then looked at me and suggested maybe surgery is not for me.

 

wow ok. is that a big part of the process though? is a simulation given a lot of weight or is it mostly the surgeries themselves. are you pursuing surgery? if not, was it that joystick task that discouraged/prevented you?

 

I'm kind of worried now. But the earlier post said almost anyone can do the physical tasks of surgery? Kind of getting conflicted results here?

[NLengr]

As part of my general surgery rotation I was given the opportunity to do a simulation lab they use to train their general surgeons. There were these two prong things and you had to move a joy stick to control the prongs to do simulated procedures.

 

Let's just say I was the fastest done because I perforated all the patients and they all died.

 

My preceptor looked at the results and then looked at me and suggested maybe surgery is not for me.

 

Was it a lap simulator? I'm not sure what the hell you were doing. Even robotics and LESS isn't like what you describe.

 

Simulation plays a small role in training still. Most of it is still graduated learning on real patients.

 

Trust me, unless you are a total disaster (like can't walk a straight line disaster) you are trainable.

 

I'm a senior resident in a surgical specialty. Renin is psych I believe.

[Tricky]

Sounds like you are an undergrad student and not in medical school yet? I'm not into clerkship and beyond but I'd say take things one step at a time and make sure you don't get too worried about things that are so far away. Focus on what you're doing now and getting into medical school and then focus on what area you like the best. There are a lot of things to factor in when deciding if a specialty is right for you (besides the dexterity needed) and I think it's too hard to see those until you're closer to applying to one. I would assume the manual skills are just like any other manual skills/sports etc., the more you do, the more natural it gets. And it sounds like you get a lot of hours to practice in residency lol. After 10,000 hours you're apparently a pro, right?

[Renin]

wow ok. is that a big part of the process though? is a simulation given a lot of weight or is it mostly the surgeries themselves. are you pursuing surgery? if not, was it that joystick task that discouraged/prevented you?

 

I'm kind of worried now. But the earlier post said almost anyone can do the physical tasks of surgery? Kind of getting conflicted results here?

 

Let me be clear that I didn't have any problems doing the actual surgical stuff they would let a med student do - they tried me on the sim because I was interested in doing surgery. I generally do not have bad dexterity (from my piano days), so I thought I'd give it a go.

 

My hand-eye is terrible. I can't catch a football, I can't catch a set of keys ... I am just very very very no good and quite terrible at any thing like that. I think you can be trained to do a lot of the tasks, but I didn't want to risk it.

 

Also, the surgery lifestyle is too hard on me, and I don't love it enough to pursue it. The simulator was just one more nail in that coffin.

 

And yes, I'm a psych resident. The comments the preceptor made were more to encourage me to pursue something else because he also thought I had the personality type for things other than surgery as well.

 

Sorry for the confusion