Surgeons Best at Dexterity Game, but They Swear More

This is a MedPage Today story. Surgeons beat out other hospital staff when it came to a "buzz wire" dexterity game, but they also were more likely to swear while playing, researchers found. A far larger proportion of surgeons completed the game within 5 minutes (84%) compared with physicians (57%), nurses (54%), and non-clinical staff (51%; P<0.001), according to Michael Drozd, MBChB, PhD, of the University of Leeds in England, and colleagues. Yet they also had the highest rate of swearing (50%), followed by nurses (30%), physicians (25%), and non-clinical staff (23%; P=0.004), the researchers reported in the Christmas edition of The BMJ. "Everyone knows surgeons brag about having steady hands, so we decided to put this to the test," Drozd told MedPage Today in an email. "The buzz wire game gave us an objective measure whilst being fun." "We expected surgeons to show good dexterity given their role, but we were surprised by just how much better they were at the game," he added,...