Who drops the beat? Effects of music on residents in laparoscopic surgery

Music is played in the operating room and commonly chosen by the surgeon or circulating nurse. The aim of this study is to measure the effect of different genres of music on resident performance in laparoscopic surgery.

This is a prospective observational study including residents from a university-affiliated general surgery program who performed standardized laparoscopic skills while listening to music.

64% of residents ranked pop music as their favorite genre followed by classic rock, country, and classical at 17%, 11% and 8% respectively. For peg transfer and intracorporeal knot tying, the task completion time was fastest with pop music (57.4 s p < 0.49, 109.6 s p < 0.47) and slowest with classical (61.4 s p < 0.49, 148.1 s p < 0.47).

Pop music was ranked the most favored genre and found to have the fastest task completion times however, no genre of music was statistically significant in improving resident performance.