What Are Some Quick And Easy Hand Exercises That I Can Do To See If I Am Fit To Be A Surgeon?

This question was originally posted on Quora, and here are some of the best answers:

Answer 1 by Robert Gluck, Hand Surgeon, The Healthy Hands Center -- Long Island, NY

It would be all too easy to sidestep your question because, in fact, hand exercises are not the real key to being a good surgeon. That's not to argue that technical skills and virtuosity and efficiency in the operating room (OR) don't have their value. They do.

Yet there are other skills that are arguably of more importance. This would include things such as: knowing when to operate and when not, choice of operation, communication skills with patients and co-workers, not to mention empathy and humility.

In fact, in keeping with that theme I will refer you to a related question: What-are-some-quick-and-easy-hand-exercises-that-I-can-do-to-see-if-I-am-fit-to-be-a-surgeon? You would do well to read the excellent responses there from Drs. Lazlo Tamas, Lauren Greenberg, Gary Stein, Ezra Klein, and David Cooke.

Having said that, I will make an effort to deal somewhat directly with your question:

1. Hand Exercise tools: more so than strength per se you need dexterity and hand-eye coordination.

To the extent that you did need strength you might use one of the grippers that allows for individual finger grip i.e the ones used by guitarists and rock climbers. They are color coded by degree of spring tension and you want the easiest one. This device will allow for strengthening of the small muscles of the hand, so-called "intrinsic muscles", which are the ones you will largely use for manipulation of instruments, dissection, knot tying etc...

Another fun tool are the chinese balls, with or without chimes. Get the appropriate size for your hand. You manipulate two balls at a time in your palm, clockwise and counter clockwise. This is fun and can even become meditative.

Lastly, stop into your friendly neighborhood hand therapy office and ask if they might let you see the "toys" that they use.

2. Hobbies: one excellent hobby for improving manual dexterity is magic. To perform card and coin sleight of hand one needs an extraordinary set of hand skills. Not to mention that you could incorporate magic into your practice and especially if you work with kids. Like telling a good joke, a quick coin vanish can "break the ice" in a stressful situation or maybe be the "icing on the cake" of a doctor-patient relationship.

Musical instruments are another great resource for hand exercise, aside from their other known benefits. As a hand surgeon, I encourage musician patients of mine to make their instruments an integral part of their recovery from trauma or surgery.

3. Keyboard use: as with any exercise/ physical activity, as long as you don't overdue it to the point of Repetitive Stress Injury (RSI), typing will exercise the small muscles of the hand

4. Games: certain video/arcade type games will encourage hand and finger dexterity and hand-eye coordination.

5. Mock surgery: there is a time honored tradition of using simple mockups for practicing suturing and knot tying. This could be anything from sewing the skin of an orange that you slice to tying knots around a bedpost. As a surgical resident I screwed an eye hook into a piece of wood and used that to tie knots to. For teaching micro-surgical skills we still use a piece of rubber (i.e surgical glove) stretched out over a jar lid or the like. There are of course now much more sophisticated and realistic versions of this stuff available in surgical training labs.

BTW back in the day in biology class, and even in grade school, we would dissect rats and frogs and the like. As a lover of animals and vegetarian I hate to admit it but as a future surgeon I think it had it's benefits. The experience came me a level of comfort and confidence that I never forgot.

I'm not sure if biology classes still do what we did and would understand why. No doubt these days there are sophisticated technological alternatives. But there was something, at least for me, to recommend the experience.

Hopefully that's enough to get you going. Once again for good measure I'll underscore that there is far more to excellence in surgery than hand dexterity and hand-eye coordination. The hand skills will come with practice and that's at least part of what surgical training is about.

Not to say that there aren't some otherwise well known, brilliant, creative, and caring surgeons who are obviously lacking in technical skills in the operating room. There are.

If you can manage to excel both in and out of the operating room, with both technical and people skills, with both the "when" as well as "how" to operate, and with both the art and science of being a good physician, then you will have achieved sucess.

PS for completeness, as I did with other question I referenced above, I'm including The Oath of Maimonides, attributed to Moses Maimonedes- a physician as well as noted scholar and philosopher. I do so by way of underscoring the skill set that any good physician needs:

The Oath of Maimonides

The eternal providence has appointed me to watch over the life and health of Thy creatures. May the love for my art actuate me at all time; may neither avarice nor miserliness, nor thirst for glory or for a great reputation engage my mind; for the enemies of truth and philanthropy could easily deceive me and make me forgetful of my lofty aim of doing good to Thy children.
May I never see in the patient anything but a fellow creature in pain.
Grant me the strength, time and opportunity always to correct what I have acquired, always to extend its domain; for knowledge is immense and the spirit of man can extend indefinitely to enrich itself daily with new requirements.
Today he can discover his errors of yesterday and tomorrow he can obtain a new light on what he thinks himself sure of today. Oh, God, Thou has appointed me to watch over the life and death of Thy creatures; here am I ready for my vocation and now I turn unto my calling.

Answer 2 by Lauren Greenberg, Plastic surgeon in private practice, Palo Alto.


Things to do to become a better surgeon:

Hand exercises to increase your palmar grip strength. You can get one of the those hand gripper things.

Practice with a hemostat. Open and close, open and close, open and close with your palm.

Practice sewing. Sew everything. Chicken. Pillows. Anything. Use a needle driver and suture.


One of the things you didn't focus on which is important to being a surgeon is your eyesight.

Good depth perception and good visual spatial recognition is important. They considered giving prospective plastic surgery residents a quiz at Stanford to test their visual spatial abilities. It was a timed test. One part was looking at boxes with some sides shaded and others were not- what would it look like when you folded it together? Particularly for plastic surgery where we move things around a lot (z plasties, flaps, breast reductions), you have to be able to visualize what you are moving where.

And lastly, you need to be calm. If something happens, being able to be clear and calm is critical. Nothing taught me that like watching the cardiac surgeons when I was in my general surgery training.

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