Animal-Assisted Therapy is a type of therapeutic intervention focused on improving mental, physical, and emotional well-being. A simple, ten minute interaction can have significant effects on an individual’s state of mind in any setting, including hospitals, nursing homes, and mental health facilities. The therapy animals are always accompanied with a handler with specialized expertise with the animal.
This year’s Therapy Dog Researchers (clockwise from back, left): Ellie Gradert, Deann Clark, Emily Nguyen, Dr. Katie Trujillo
This experiment is a continuation of the past year’s project, hypothesizing that therapy dogs will reduce the stress levels of family members of patients undergoing surgery or cardiac procedures. This will be done by measuring pulse, oxygen levels, and self-reporting anxiety levels and pet attitudes and introducing a therapy dog either before (control) or after (experimental) the measurements are taken. Pulse changes are a physiological indication of a person’s stress levels, but can be easily influenced by extrinsic factors. Due to the variability of pulse, self-report measures will also be used to determine changes in anxiety compared to both groups. The STAI reports state and trait anxiety levels, differentiating the anxiety at the current moment (state) and the average anxiety of the participant (trait). The second measure, a pet attitude survey will additionally examine whether general attitude towards pets has any correlation to therapy dog effectiveness in reducing stress levels.
Therapy dog teams are regularly scheduled to make hospital visits to patient’s rooms, but not always to waiting areas for family and friends of patients currently undergoing surgery or a procedure. The impact of this study will bring light to the effectiveness of a therapy dog interaction with family members in reducing anxiety levels.
Charlie, the Puggle, and his mom, Kristin are helping us with date collection.
During the first two weeks of the 2018 Summer Research Institute, students have been preparing for therapy dog interactions with participants at Genesis East. The research team has been putting together packets, organizing control and experimental groups into sealed, learning how to recruit participants, and learning the step-by-step procedure for participants. We have also gone through the statistical coding and analysis of data that will be needed to see if there is a statistical significance between the experimental and control groups. Recently, we visited Trinity in Rock Island to observe the role of a therapy dog in a hospital setting, learning the abilities and limitations of utilizing therapy dogs. After a recent visit to Genesis East, the preparation has been completed and we collected data from three participants this week. We hope to collect data from 15-20 additional participants before the end of the institute! ~Emily Nguyen and Dr. Katie Trujillo
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