Dexterity assessment of hospital workers: prospective comparative study
bmj.comThere's a standard test for this: The O'Connor Tweezer Dexterity Test.[1] There's a board with small holes, a supply of metal pins, and a tweezer for putting pins in the holes. It's overpriced, because it's "medical".
Some electronics assembly plants use such a test to screen new hires.
Tweezer dexterity improves with practice. Hands are more precise than vision. Looking through a microscope, you can position something within a thousandth of an inch with tweezers. This is familiar to anyone who's placed surface mount parts on a board by hand.
The toy used in the study is a lot cheaper - about $15. See https://www.johnlewis.com/john-lewis-buzzwire-game/p4349607
I was really expecting to see it was the classic “Operation“ game when I first saw mention in the paper.
The study appears to omit handedness as a potential factor influencing performance.
Why is it relevant to include that factor
Whether by specific design or just by unconscious bias, the world is primarily right handed.
The buzzwire game used for example has a wand on a flexible wire with the wire attached towards one side of the base and not the center. Does this create bias? Hard to say, but it might.
See pictures of the Buzzwire used in the test at https://www.johnlewis.com/john-lewis-buzzwire-game/p4349607
Gut reaction to the results: swearing because you feel you should have got it, and frustration because you feel it's too hard.
I still think surgeons should offer shaves.
> Implementation of a surgical swear jar initiative
Yes, the main goal of a surgical site is to avoid swearing
> our findings are not applicable to children younger than 4 years for whom the buzz wire game’s small parts may represent a choking hazard, although these individuals are unlikely to be currently employed in secondary care.
Now, that's a point. I'd avoid a 0-3 toddler if i could choose so before some surgery.
This is an example of a sentence where truncation significantly changes the meaning. It reads in full
> Implementation of a surgical swear jar initiative should be considered for future fundraising events.
from which it is clear that suppression of swearing by the surgeons is very much not the intended goal.
It would seem that swearing is correlated with higher skill. It may be premature to suggest that we should encourage increased swearing - correlation is not causation - but it seems the logical avenue to pursue. Further research is needed.