[needlesurgeon]

Simulators are effective only as their verisimilitude. Certain neurosurgical procedures are well-reproduced using simulators (most notably the insertion of external ventricular drains[0] for hydrocephalus). Surgical simulation have also shown to be be effective in systems where the principle goal is to get the trainee used to getting visual and limited tactile feedback in specific settings, such as laparoscopic procedures. One thing that has been extensively explored is providing trainees biofeedback about their roughness of manipulating tissues. This in itself is useful; but, to use a musical metaphor, it's more like practicing scales than practicing a performance.

It turns out that recreating tissue in a VR environment that looks and feels like real tissue is a really hard problem. This is a growing industry, and I have no doubt that developers / biophysicists / clinicians will continue to produce more and more realistic systems. Frankly, we're just not there yet. Right now, there is no substitute for the real thing.

Put another way: imagine using a flight simulator where one couldn't reproduce the physics of a real plane. This would be somewhat useful, but have limited transference to actually flying a real plane.

[0] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26115472