Westbrook Shortell, N-C-C News.
Wii Would Like to Play
For the past two years Nintendo’s new gaming system has really revolutionized the gaming industry. The Wii has a unique remote. It’s wireless, enabling the player to experience a different kind of gaming. In games like Wii sports, it allows the player to actually mimic real life movements.
Wii is Making P.T. Less Like Physical Torture and More Like… Playing Video Games
It’s the free motion and mimicking that therapy is taking advantage of. At the Nottingham Senior Retirement Community, the Wii is helping its residents regain their independence. Rita Fahey, a Nottingham resident used to love to play golf. She said “… I used to play at least two or three eighteen holes a week.” When the first video game came out Rita was 57. But she said she is using the Nintendo Wii to get back out onto the links. “I think it’s given me a lot of metal therapy as well as physical therapy because it reminds me that I loved to play golf and be outside exercising and walk and when you walk on a long golf course you're getting a lot of exercise”
Kelly Van Auken-Mason, an Occupational therapist at the Nottingham, said important core excercizes can be accomplished on the wii and patients can have a good time doing it. “ The trend right now in therapy is the core, the trunk, the stability and that really is vitally important for this population. A lot of the core excersizes we do are kind of boring… You can actually do that on the Wii with the golf shot because you’re getting a lof of lateral movement and they’re actually having to balance their body more”
WiiHab Helping turn Strokes Into Strikes
At the SUNY Upstate Medical Center, the Wii is helping stroke patients get better. Bob Maybee Jr. was an avid fisherman. He took ESPN crews out on Onondaga lake and Oneida lake to shoot video for Bass Master tournaments. A few months ago, a stroke immobilized the left side of his body, chanign his life forever. A few days before playing the Wii, he couldn’t even stand. Now, with help, Maybee is able to play almost half a full game of Wii bowling. Donna Simms, a certified recreational therapist, said the Wii is helping stroke patients reestablish pathways in our brain damaged by strokes. “Every time [patients] do [Wii] movements they are challenging their brain to do something to create a new path to go in a place that they haven’t been able to go and asking their brain to Find another route. “ Simms said the button sequences and then the actual movement of the remote are what reestablishes the pathways.
Are Medical Students Losing Their Marbles?
While patients are learning how to regain their independace, A preliminary study at the Banner Good Samaritan Medical Center is finding video games are actually improving med students performance in practice surgeries. Dr. Marshall Simth and Kavil Kahol had a group of students play the game Marble Mania for one hour before performing a practice laporoscopic gall bladder surgery. The students who did play the game scored almost fifty percent higher on the surgery than those who didn’t. Dr. Smith said, “There is a 92 percent correlation between the game and a surgeon… the test didn’t really measure cognitive skills decisions, it measured psycho motor skills and that was very good.”
Wii want results
The medical world is now unlocking secret levels with te healing powers of the Wii. Patients like Bob Maybee and Rita Fahey are using the Wii for their own benefit. What parents once thought of as a nuisance is now changing people's lives.
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