This Article  • References  • Full text PDF  • Send to a friend  • Save in My Folder  • Save to citation manager  • Permissions  Citing Articles  • Citing articles on HighWire  • Contact me when this article is cited  Related Content  • Similar articles in JAMA  Social Bookmarking   What's this?

Matthew B. Weinger, MD
University of California, San Diego

JAMA. 1995;273(14):1090-1091.

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text PDF and any section headings.

To the Editor.

—Drs Allen and Blascovich¹ are to be congratulated for pursuing an important avenue of research— the potential effect of a performance-shaping factor,² listening to music, on clinical task performance. In their well-controlled laboratory study, surgeons performed a cognitively demanding task (serial subtraction) with greater speed and accuracy but less stress (less autonomic reactivity) when preferred music was being played compared with nonpreferred or no music. Unfortunately, the authors' concluding statement, which implies an essential role for music in the operating room, is not substantiated by their data. First, the results of their study may not be generalizable to the surgeon performing in the operating room. Second, they neglect to consider the potential impact of playing a surgeon's preferred music on other members of the operating room team.

Several methodological aspects of the authors' study may limit the applicability of their results to the real-life environment. . . . [Full Text PDF of this Article]

CiteULike    Connotea    Del.icio.us    Digg    Reddit    Technorati    Twitter     What's this?