Development and Initial Testing of a Brief Mindfulness Meditation Training Intervention for Preoperative Patients: An Application of the ORBIT Model
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Over 1,500,000 surgical procedures occur in Canada every year. Although medical and technological advances have greatly improved outcomes, surgery is not risk free: for instance, 3-16% of patients receiving general anesthesia will experience a perioperative complication; and approximately 30% of arthroplasty patients report an adverse event. Biomedical, social, and psychological factors have all been associated with poor surgical outcomes and perioperative complications. One such factor is preoperative distress, an acute stress reaction experienced by a patient in response to impending surgery. Individuals with higher preoperative distress experience more adverse events, like delayed wound healing and mortality. The psychological technique of mindfulness meditation is associated with improved health and well-being, and is suggested as a potential tool for mitigating preoperative distress. Informed by the mindfulness mediation literature, Social Cognitive Theory, and the ORBIT Model of Developing Behavioural Treatments for Chronic Disease, this dissertation aimed to develop and test a mindfulness meditation protocol for patients undergoing elective surgery. Research took place in three parts, corresponding with Phases IA, IB, and IIA of the ORBIT Model. Study One utilized a theory-guided, mixed-methods design, in which surgical wait-list patients (N = 31) and health care providers (N = 20) provided feedback regarding their perceptions of and preferences concerning preoperative mindfulness meditation. In Study Two, Study One findings were integrated with the results of a literature review to develop a theory-grounded and evidence-based mindfulness meditation intervention. The intervention was reviewed by both health professionals (N = 16) and surgical wait-list patients (N = 14), who reported that it was both acceptable and beneficial. Lastly, Study Three was a proof-of-concept study in which the mindfulness meditation intervention was tested via randomized controlled trial. Surgical wait-list patients (N = 66) received either standard care or standard care plus mindfulness meditation. Results indicated small but consistent pre-post meditation improvements in health/wellness perceptions, suggestive that a brief, online meditation bestows an acute benefit. Between-group differences in perioperative health, mental health, and functioning variables were primarily non-significant and small. Together, the three studies suggest that a brief, online mindfulness meditation program is feasible and may produce acute changes in patient health. However, many questions remain regarding the role of mindfulness meditation during the perioperative window. Namely: Is there something unique within the perioperative environment that renders (brief, online) mindfulness meditation non-effective? Do patients require a greater “dose” of mindfulness meditation to see an effect? (And, if so, are these higher-dose interventions feasible?) What surgical- or patient-level factors might moderate effects?
Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.
How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.003 | 0.005 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".