I was at the doctor’s office yesterday morning with my boyfriend, who had a septoplasty earlier this week.

What does that have to do with video games?

The doctor who performed my boyfriend’s nasal procedure, had mentioned during a previous visit that he had played the Wii at his cousin’s house over Christmas. This reminded me of the study that reported that surgeons who played the Wii before a virtual training test performed better than those who didn’t.

But that study had only eight surgical residents participating, so I decided to ask Dr. Nilesh Patel what he thought. “I think there’s probably some truth to that [study],” Patel told me after he removed plastic splints from my boyfriend’s nose. “Not just the Wii but any video game where it probably develops good hand-eye coordination. So, to that extent, it probably helps people.”

“I know that there are studies that have actually shown that it actually helps,” he said. “They actually have simulated video games to even simulate surgeries, so they’re actually training people how to do surgeries on a computer model before — so for that reason, too. But definitely it’s going to build hand-eye coordination, especially for something where you’re doing sinus surgery or something like that; you need hand-eye coordination because you’re often working off the video monitor.”

Though Dr. Patel is not a regular gamer himself, he skillfully (and thankfully) performed my boyfriend’s surgery with great success. I asked if he thought would-be scalpel-wielders should play more video games. “Well, I don’t know about playing more video games,” he responded, laughing. “But yeah, I think more from the education point of view… there can be video games or an equivalence created that is specifically designed to help with specific surgical tasks, and I think that would make a difference.”

As for the surgery-centric “Trauma Center” series, Patel hasn’t heard of them, but he plans to check them out. When I suggested he make a “Septoplasty Tycoon,” he just shook his head and laughed at me.