Medical Students Losing Dexterity for Stitching or Sewing up Patients

Medical Students Difficulty in Sewing up Patients

Too Much Screen Time Not Enough Play Time?

“It is a concern of mine and my scientific colleagues that whereas in the past you could make the assumption that students would leave school able to do certain practical things - cutting things out, making things - that is no longer the case”
— Prof Kneebone

A professor of surgery at Imperial College London, Prof. Kneebone, who teaches medical students, has said that students have spent so much time in front of screens and so little time using their hands they have lost the dexterity required for stitching or sewing up patients.



They have so little experience that they struggle with anything practical and he urges schools to encourage more creativity and crafting to equip surgeons of the future. The impact of creative subjects being squeezed out of the national curriculum is covered by a report by The Edge Foundation looking at creativity being at the heart of all aspects of schooling not just the arts.

“We have students who have very high exam grades but lack tactile general knowledge.”
— Prof Kneebone

This is yet another downside to kids who are play-deprived but over-saturated by increasingly getting too ‘hands on’ with technology - unfortunately most of that time is leisure technology time given that Design & Technology selection as a GCSE subject has fallen by 57% between 2010 and 2018, according to the Edge Foundation’s Towards a Twenty-First Century Education System: Edge Future Learning report.

Find out more about this news item on the BBC News website.


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