A single minute of mindfulness before surgery may offer operating-room teams a simple way to prepare mentally for a demanding procedure. Researchers at The Ohio State University College of Medicine and the Ohio State Wexner Medical Center have examined whether a brief, audio-guided mindfulness exercise can fit into the surgical workflow and how staff members perceive the experience.
The study, titled A 1-minute mindfulness exercise for surgical teams in the operating room: an acceptability pilot, was published online on September 27, 2026, in the journal Explore. The research involved 116 surgical team members, including surgeons, nurses and other operating-room professionals. Overall, 61% said they would recommend the exercise to other teams, while more than half reported favorable impressions across several measures related to calmness, mental clarity, stress and perceived patient safety.
The findings offer an encouraging early signal for short mindfulness practices in high-pressure workplaces. However, the researchers evaluated staff perceptions rather than objective surgical outcomes. Their results therefore establish that the exercise was generally acceptable to participants, not that it reduced surgical errors or improved patient safety.
Why Ohio State Researchers Tested A One-Minute Practice
Operating rooms require sustained attention, coordination and communication among professionals working under strict time constraints. Surgical teams must manage complex information, respond to unexpected developments and coordinate their actions while maintaining focus on patient care.
These demands make the operating room an interesting setting for mindfulness research. Longer meditation programs can require substantial time commitments, which may make them difficult to incorporate into tightly scheduled clinical routines.
The Ohio State team investigated whether a much shorter intervention could be introduced immediately before surgery without creating a significant interruption.
The research involved investigators affiliated with several Ohio State departments and programs. The authors included Maryanna Klatt, Elizabeth Palmer Kelly, Odysseas P. Chatzipanagiotou, Anne-Marie Duchemin, Swathy Shankarganesh, Slate Bretz, Parv Sharma, Angela M. Emerson and Timothy Pawlik.
Their work brought together expertise connected with integrative health, surgery, psychiatry and research on human performance. The study’s central question was practical: would operating-room professionals accept a one-minute mindfulness exercise as part of their preparation for surgery?
The full study is available through PubMed, which lists the publication details, authors and research abstract.
How The One-Minute Mindfulness Exercise Worked
The researchers conducted a single-arm pilot study, meaning participants received the intervention without being randomly assigned to a separate control group.
Before the surgical procedure, a mindfulness exercise was played over a speaker in the operating room. Participation was optional, allowing team members to decide whether to engage with the exercise.
After surgery, staff members were invited to complete a survey about their experience. The questions covered five areas: perceived calmness, mental clarity, stress, the exercise’s perceived contribution to patient safety, and whether participants would recommend it to other surgical teams.
The researchers also collected open-ended feedback to capture participants’ impressions beyond the structured questions.
This approach allowed the team to evaluate whether the intervention could be introduced into a real clinical environment and whether staff members considered it worthwhile. It also provided an initial indication of how a short mindfulness practice might be received by people with different roles in the operating room.
Importantly, the exercise was not a substitute for a surgical safety checklist, a team briefing or any other established clinical procedure. Its purpose was to provide a brief opportunity for mental preparation before the work began.
What The 116 Surgical Team Members Reported
A total of 116 people participated in the study. Surgeons represented the largest professional group, accounting for 32.8% of participants, while nurses represented 19.8%. The remaining participants came from other operating-room roles.
The findings were generally favorable across the survey questions. More than half of respondents reported positive perceptions concerning calmness, clarity, stress, potential contribution to patient safety and willingness to recommend the exercise. Fewer than 15% disagreed with the statements across these measures.
The clearest headline result was the recommendation rate: 61% of participants said they would recommend the exercise.
The study also found no statistically significant differences in responses between physicians and non-physician team members across the survey items. This suggests that the exercise was received similarly by participants from different professional groups, although it does not establish that every role experienced the same benefits.
These figures should be interpreted in context. The survey captured participants’ own assessments after exposure to the intervention. It did not objectively measure stress hormones, attention, surgical performance or the number of errors during procedures.
The findings therefore describe how the intervention was perceived, rather than proving a measurable physiological or clinical effect.
Why Brief Mindfulness May Appeal To Healthcare Teams
Mindfulness generally involves directing attention to the present moment while observing thoughts, emotions and bodily sensations without immediately reacting to them.
A short practice can include noticing the breath, releasing unnecessary muscular tension, or briefly returning attention to the immediate environment. The goal is not to eliminate every stressful thought. It is to create a small pause in which attention can become more deliberate.
For operating-room professionals, a brief pause may be attractive because it requires little additional time and can potentially be incorporated into an existing preparation routine. A one-minute exercise also presents a lower initial time commitment than a multiweek mindfulness course.
That distinction matters in healthcare settings, where staffing demands, procedure schedules and competing responsibilities can make longer wellness programs difficult to sustain.
The Ohio State study adds to broader interest in workplace mindfulness by examining an intervention in a real clinical setting rather than relying exclusively on laboratory tasks or extended training programs.
Still, a favorable response to a short exercise should not be confused with proof that it prevents burnout, improves concentration during an operation or changes patient outcomes. Those questions require more rigorous investigation.
Readers interested in building a regular practice can explore the site’s guide to mindfulness routines for examples of ways to incorporate brief periods of present-moment awareness into everyday life.
What The Study Can—and Cannot—Tell Us About Patient Safety
Patient safety was one of the dimensions included in the post-surgery survey. Participants were asked whether they perceived the exercise as contributing to safety during surgery.
That is a meaningful question because clinical safety depends on communication, situational awareness, coordination and adherence to established procedures. A brief mindfulness exercise could plausibly be investigated as one part of a broader preparation process.
However, perceived contribution and demonstrated improvement are different outcomes.
The study did not use a randomized control group to compare surgical teams that completed the exercise with teams that did not. It also did not establish whether the intervention reduced surgical complications, improved procedural accuracy, prevented communication failures or changed other objective measures of patient care.
Without a comparison group, researchers cannot confidently attribute favorable perceptions to the mindfulness exercise itself. Other factors—including the team’s existing routines, expectations about mindfulness and the circumstances surrounding each procedure—could have influenced responses.
The voluntary nature of the intervention is another consideration. Staff members who chose to engage with mindfulness or complete the survey may have had different attitudes from those who did not.
The results should therefore be understood as an early feasibility and acceptability signal. They support further investigation, but they do not justify claims that a one-minute meditation makes surgery safer.
The Next Step Is Testing Effectiveness In Larger Studies
The Ohio State researchers identified several areas for future work, including refining how the exercise is delivered within the operating-room workflow and evaluating its feasibility and effectiveness on a larger scale.
Future studies could compare teams receiving the mindfulness exercise with teams following standard preparation procedures. Researchers could also examine whether the intervention affects self-reported stress, teamwork, communication and attention over time.
To assess patient-safety implications, further research would need appropriate objective outcomes and study designs capable of separating the effect of mindfulness from other influences. Larger samples could help determine whether the intervention works similarly across surgical specialties, team sizes and clinical settings.
Another important question is consistency. A one-minute exercise may be easy to introduce, but its usefulness could depend on the audio format, the timing of delivery, whether participation remains voluntary and how well it fits existing workflows.
The researchers’ pilot provides an initial foundation for investigating these questions. It does not settle them.
What This Means For Everyday Mindfulness Practice
The study’s most useful message for readers interested in meditation is that mindfulness does not always require a lengthy session. A brief pause can be a practical starting point for paying attention to the present moment, particularly before a demanding task.
Outside the operating room, a person might take a minute before a work meeting, pause between tasks, or notice a few natural breaths before responding to a stressful situation. The practice can remain simple: notice the breath, recognize when attention wanders, and gently return focus to the present.
These examples are practical applications of mindfulness principles, not interventions tested by the Ohio State surgical study. The research does not establish that one minute of mindfulness produces lasting health benefits or that its results can be generalized to every workplace.
Longer or structured programs may be appropriate for people seeking sustained mindfulness training, while brief exercises can provide an accessible entry point. The best approach depends on a person’s goals, preferences and circumstances.
For now, the Ohio State findings provide a promising but preliminary example of how researchers are testing mindfulness in environments where time is limited and concentration matters. The 61% recommendation rate suggests that many participants were open to the idea. Whether the exercise produces measurable improvements in staff well-being, team functioning or patient outcomes remains an important question for future research.