Pilot Training through Simulation. The Virtual World has never been so real (fig.1)

Fighter pilot and surgeon trades are often paralleled. Both manage risk situations in which lives are at stake. They constantly have to deal with heavy time, decisional or organizational pressures. They are confronted with adverse events requiring strict application of processes or a high level of adaptation. They often have to to deal with their own fatigue and stress, but also with their team constrains. Since the advent of robotic surgery, these two experts now share a new field: the use of high-tech tools requiring specific technical skills.This presentation is intended for surgeons to depict some characteristic features of everyday combat pilots and navigators. Through these stories and explanations, they will discover this seemingly remote, yet so close to them, world. We will pay a particularly attention on presenting the use of flight simulator under the training of fighter crews. Surgeons will perhaps find potential medical adaptations.