2,000-year-old experiment tests virtual reality’s surgical training ability
A scalpel can follow instructions, but a hand still has to decide what “superficially” means. That is the stubborn problem at the center of a new correspondence in Nature Medicine, which argues that modern medical education is struggling to teach one of its most important ingredients: tacit learning, the embodied, hard-to-describe knowledge physicians gain through supervised practice. Digital simulations, virtual reality, and 3D models can teach anatomy and the visible steps of a procedure. However, what they still cannot reliably pass on, the authors argue, is the physical judgment that makes those steps safe and competent in the real world. The point came into focus through an unusual reconstruction. A multidisciplinary team in Jerusalem, led by Prof. Orly Lewis of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, attempted to recreate a dissection of the abdominal wall and peritoneum of a female pig specimen. They used the second book of Galen’s Anatomical Procedures, a rare surviving surgical handbook from the second century CE. The instructions were detailed, even precise. They were also not enough. Dr. Orly Lewis, Classical …
