What is it about?
Heart surgery is a major life event, and many patients experience anxiety, depression, or stress before and after their operation. These emotional challenges can affect recovery, quality of life, and even survival, yet hospitals rarely screen for them in a systematic way. Our EMBRACE study aims to change that. Our study describes formative research to guide how emotional well-being screening and support can be introduced into cardiac surgery care. We are examining how common these psychological issues are, how they influence recovery such as how quickly and safely patients return home, and whether simple screening tools can identify those who might need extra help emotionally. At the same time, we ask patients what types of support they would prefer, such as online resources, relaxation tools, or professional counselling, so future programs can be tailored to real needs. This research is an important first step toward making emotional health care a routine part of heart surgery, improving recovery, patient experience, and reducing costs for health services.
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Why is it important?
Although the link between heart and mind has been recognized for years—and recent clinical guidelines urge screening and referral—routine screening remains uncommon because services face limited resources and practical implementation barriers (e.g., time constraints, workflow disruption, and variable clinician knowledge). Our study addresses this gap by using formative research—still rare in clinical services—to map how emotional health influences recovery and service use, test whether simple tools can flag patients who need help, and learn what types of support patients actually want. These insights will guide the design of efficient, tailored pre‑operative screening and support programs to improve outcomes and reduce costs.
Perspectives
As an epidemiologist, I’m passionate about using clinical data—especially routinely collected data—to understand what drives patient outcomes and inform better decisions. Writing this article was an opportunity to apply such techniques to an area that’s often overlooked but deeply important to patients: emotional health in cardiac surgery. Many patients tell us the stress of surgery is significant, yet acute care services struggle to address it because of resource constraints and implementation barriers. This study is intended to be a pragmatic, formative step toward designing quality improvement processes that make emotional well-being screening and support both feasible and patient-centred. For me, it’s exciting to bring a data-driven approach to a problem that matters so much to patients and could transform how we deliver care. I hope this study sparks momentum toward making emotional well-being screening and support more easily adopted as a routine part of cardiac care.
Susan Smith
The Prince Charles Hospital
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Formative research for a pre-operative psychosocial screening program for cardiac surgical patients: The EMBRACE study, a mixed methods knowledge to action protocol, PLOS One, December 2025, PLOS,
DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0322592.
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