Posted on 10/30/2018 8:21:23 AM PDT by Winniesboy
Leading surgeon says lack of hobbies and creativity in schools has affected children’s practical abilities. New medical students have spent so much time on screens that they lack vital practical skills necessary to conduct life-saving operations, a leading surgeon has warned.
Roger Kneebone, professor of surgical education at Imperial College London, said that a decline in hands-on creative subjects at school and practical hobbies at home means that students often do not have a basic understanding of the physical world.
Kneebone said spending hours engaged in virtual worlds was no substitute for experience in the real world.
“Partly it stops [students] being aware in three dimensions of what’s going on around them, because their focus is much narrower, but also it takes away that physical understanding you get by actually doing things,” he told BBC Radio 5 Live. “That has to be done in the real world with real stuff.”
Kneebone said there had been a “very serious knock-on effect” on practical skills among students since smartphones had become so popular.
He said: “We have noticed that medical students and trainee surgeons often don’t seem as comfortable with doing things with their hands … than they used to even perhaps five or 10 years ago.
“People are no longer getting the same exposure to making and doing [things] when they are at home, when they are school, as they used to.”
He claimed that cutting back on creative subjects at school had a negative impact on the tactile skills necessary for a career in medicine or science.
Kneebone said: “We are talking about the ability to do things with your hands, with tools, cutting things out and putting things together …
(Excerpt) Read more at theguardian.com ...
In the year 2525.............................
The lack of use of handwriting must be having a deleterious effect on the development of fine motor skills.
I get his point. I once saw video of a woman having knee replacement surgery. It was shockingly mechanical. Reminded me of every car and home repair job I had ever done.
We heard this 2.5 years ago at our son’s graduation from the Fire Academy. They used to get recruits from the trades - people who knew their way around tools and machinery. Now they get screen jockeys who don’t know which end of a hammer to pick up. But they are really good at mowing people down in Grand Theft Auto. Just the sort you want behind the wheel of the fire engine and behind the hose.
“lack of hobbies”
I was looking for a new hobby. Surgery? Hmm.
Roger Kneebone?
Is this a John Semmens satire/hoax?
Who’s the chair of the Proctology Department?
Ben Dover?
It’ll just have to all be done via cursor/touchpad, etc.
Cool. sort of. that means more room in the surgery for my kid. He can sew even stitches and precisely carve a pumpkin and won the annual award in his woodworking class. He isn’t in the medical field yet, but when he is, I am confident of his dexterity and precision.
I think today’s parents are missing out if they want the xbox to raise their kid. Part of the fun of parenting is rediscovering the ordinary tasks of life through teaching them to your child. Why wouldn’t someone want to be in the kitchen or the garage with their kid?
There's an old joke about an auto mechanic and a surgeon having a conversation. The auto mechanic complains that the surgeon makes too much money, and explains that their jobs are similar. He details the intricacy of rebuilding a high-performance engine and suggests that maybe the surgeon (whose job is so similar) is over-paid.
The surgeon says: I rebuild engines while they're still running. Do you do that?
Who is Roger Kneebone connected to?...
Is Kneebone connected to Thighbone?
I once looked into med school.
It is set up so the primary gateway is your undergrad GPA. If it isn’t sufficient, then no extenuating circumstance, life experience, or other skills are considered. From what I was told, you could have multiple advanced degrees with high marks - only your undergrad coursework is considered and it’s the same for Physician Assistant programs.
My BS GPA wasn’t all that great for several reasons. One of the schools I looked at basically told me the only option was to go back and get a couple more bachelors degrees with very high GPAs and if I got enough to average out with my first, then they might consider me.
I don’t know if this has changed, but if it’s still the case, one can easily see how it would preclude a huge swath of the population who might otherwise consider a medical career and who are more likely to have the skills this doctor finds wanting in his students.
It would be ironic if all our high tech devices led to another “Dark Ages.”
I had a discussion about this the other day when I was told that they no longer dissect real animals in high school anymore. My argument was that surgical skill was going to diminish because it’s not weeding out those who have a skill love and passion for this type of fine manual dexterity and skill from those who don’t.
Good luck learning how to tie knots in stainless steel suture on your IPhone.
"Don't worry, 'Scro!"
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