Becoming a surgeon takes a lot of time and practice, and it’s important for trainee doctors to know that they’re building the right habits. Engineers from Western Sydney University are hoping to help, by creating gloves that can track the wearer’s movements.
Currently the only way to train a new surgeon is to have an instructor watch their actions and provide feedback on what they’ve done. This means there’s a chance that some small but important details might not be noticed and corrected.
Doctor Gough Lui and his team are working to prevent this. They’ve created gloves with sensors that record exactly what the surgeon’s hands are doing throughout a surgery. Gough says that by using this technology, “teachers will be able to give precise feedback on minute details post-surgery, and students can analyse their performance.” These gloves won’t replace the current teaching process, but they could be an important extra tool to help surgeons improve their skills.
This article was published in Issue 58 of Double Helix magazine (https://www.csiro.au/en/Education/Double-Helix). Copyright for this article is held by CSIRO.
Lachlan Writes Science 