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Background: Researchers have hypothesized that years of daily practice on a musical instrument may lead to increased efficiency in practice behaviours during the learning of other fine motor skills [1]. Practice strategies in music have also been considered a suitable model for surgical training [2] and some believe that surgical outcomes might be improved by adopting musicians’ practice strategies [3].Objective: This study examines the practice behaviours of expert musicians attempting to learn a basic surgical skill, as a way to detect possible transfer of practice habits across domains. This paper investigates whether musicians differ from a control group in their selection and application of practice strategies, whether there are relationships between the choice of practice behaviours and performance scores, whether musicians progress more rapidly through the different phases of learning and, whether relationships exist between those who reach automaticity sooner and their choice of practice behaviours.Methods: Participants’ practice sessions during a knot-tying task (taught via instructional video) were video-recorded and treated according to the method of thematic analysis [4]. Coding was performed by two evaluators through an iterative process and statistical and descriptive analyses were conducted on practice behaviours. Information was also collected on instructional video navigation so that the use of replay, pause, rewind or fast-forward could be investigated.Results: Musicians and the control group participants favoured different practice behaviours; this was demonstrated in their choice of strategies, the importance they gave to each strategy, and the way they used the strategies over the two practice sessions. There was evidence that the group of expert musicians applied better practice strategies as the choice of practice behaviours correlated positively with performance scores and their capacity to reach automaticity.Conclusion: Our results suggest that music experts may be applying practice strategies developed during their music studies when learning a novel surgical skill. This raised the possibility that practice skills developed through years of dedicated work at their musical instrument, might be transferable when learning a motor skill in a different domain.

Background: The acquisition of procedural competence is of vital importance in the training of physicians. It has been observed that medical students with extensive musical backgrounds often learn surgical techniques more rapidly than other students, raising the question of motor skill transfer from one area to another. Objective: It is the aim of this project to explore whether musicians can learn and perform surgical skills more rapidly than non-musicians. This study explores the claims that musicians’ proficiency in playing their instrument can translate into benefits when learning complex and refined motor skills in another domain. Even basic surgical skills, such as suturing, become difficult in cognitively demanding environments such as the operating room, containing a barrage of multisensory stimuli where the surgeon must triage and respond to clinically salient information. Method: Participants with piano expertise and participants with no formal music training learned how to do a surgical knot and sutures. They had two practice sessions and were tested after each session. The two test parameters measured were time to complete the task and an OSATS (Objective Structures Assessment of Technical Skills) score. Results for each group (musicians and non-musicians) were analysed and compared. Results: Musician participants performed the surgical tasks faster and received higher scores than the controls; for knot tying, the difference between the two groups was statistically significant. Gender and proficiency using chopsticks also exhibited some influence on test times and scores. Conclusion: Musical training in piano appeared to be of benefit in the initial stage of learning new simple surgical skills. This indicates that at least some aspects of a musicians’ skillset (such as fine motor control, bimanual dexterity and good hand-eye coordination) might be transferrable to an ostensibly disparate domain, and may be important for incorporation in surgical training where the skill of suturing can impact both surgical outcomes, patient safety, and patient satisfaction.