In horses, clickers can help train performance skills in-hand and under saddle, as well as develop polite ground manners and self-control. | Photo: Alexandra Beckstett/The Horse

Clickers have been used to help people become better dancers, golfers, and even surgeons. Earlier this month National Public Radio science correspondent Shankar Vedantam interviewed I. Martin Levy, MD, a physician who has incorporated the clicker into surgical skills training. Levy serves as Orthopaedic Surgery Residency Program director at Montefiore Medical Center, in the Bronx, New York.

Editor’s note: Listen to Vedantam’s short interview with Levi from NPR’s Morning Edition (6 minutes), or his full NPR’s Hidden Brain segment “When Everything Clicks: The Power of Judgment-Free Learning” (51 minutes).

At one point during the interview, Levy demonstrated the use of a clicker to teach a medical resident how to tie a surgical slider knot