CBS News Bay Area reports on an event held at Good Samaritan Hospital in San Jose, Calif., that found nearly 40 children from the Boys and Girls Clubs of Silicon Valley handling a surgical robotics system.
“Many parents are fighting to get their kids off their phones and limit screen time, but one Silicon Valley hospital is proving all those games may be time well spent,” the report begins, later stating, “Thomas, an 11th grader, is seated at a console that looks almost like a gaming setup. Wraparound viewer, handheld controls, and a screen showing a robotic arm awaiting his command. Except the machine on the other side isn’t virtual. It’s a $2 million Da Vinci surgical robot, the same system doctors use to perform real operations on real people. And Thomas is a natural.”
Interviewed in the report are Good Samaritan Hospital general surgeon May-Anh Nguyen, MD, and the hospital’s director of robotic surgery, Kristine Borrison, MD. Watch the full report below:
Good Samaritan Hospital is far from the only healthcare organization linking today’s young gamers with the future of surgery. For example, in a post on its blog, Chesapeake Regional Healthcare encourages young gamers to “meet the surgeon who leveled up from Nintendo to the operating room”—thoracic surgeon Stephen L. Noble, MD, FACS, medical director of the lung nodule program at Chesapeake Regional Surgical Specialists—and encourages them to “translate your skills from the screen to the operating room.”
