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News Article
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The Power of Pet Therapy
Anne Federwisch
Nurse Week
December 3, 2007
When Jeannine Gasson, RN, first spied Kazzy the camel seven years ago outside the Lawrence Hall of Science in Berkeley, Calif., she couldn't believe her eyes. "I felt like I was in a biblical moment," she says. Then she got an idea: Wouldn't the patients at John Muir Medical Center in Walnut Creek, where she was a rehab nurse, be just as amazed seeing the baby camel? Gasson's request was not as far-fetched as she originally thought, and instigated a long-term relationship between John Muir and the camel.
Kazzy was there with Rob and Robin Lyon, owners of Lyon Ranch, a nonprofit organization in Sonoma dedicated to animal rescue and animal-assisted therapy, who were helping the two-humped Bactrian camel adjust to crowds and travel as part of her training to visit healthcare facilities.
The Lyons had been bringing animals to nursing homes and hospitals for therapeutic visits since 1997. They adopted 3-day-old Kazzy in 2000 specifically for that purpose after Robin Lyon read an article about students at Cornell University who used a camel for animal-assisted therapy. "She thought if they can do it, we can do it. I didn't see how a camel would work in a therapy program at all, but she had the foresight to realize it would work," Rob Lyon says. By reading books and using Kazzy's natural behaviors, they were able to train her to interact lovingly with people.
Born at 110 pounds and less than 3 feet tall, Kazzy has since grown to 7'6" and 1,750 pounds — a formidable presence. Her visits make quite an impact, says Maggie Maguire, a recreational therapist at John Muir who also had a hand in bringing the camel to the facility.
"I've had a pet therapy program at the hospital for 18 years," Maguire says. Fittingly, the facility's namesake, John Muir, once said, "Any glimpse into the life of an animal quickens our own and makes it so much the larger and better in every way." The hospital's Concord campus has also instituted a pet therapy program by teaming up with Tony La Russa's Animal Rescue Foundation.
Maguire says they have dogs visit the Walnut Creek campus on a regular basis, but that Kazzy and the Lyon Ranch animals "are our pet therapy extravaganza. They come once a year to our hospital in honor of National Rehabilitation Week. That's the highlight of the whole year for me." The Lyons also bring other animals, such as birds, exotic cats, and chicks.
Gasson is thrilled to have played a role in bringing Kazzy to the medical center. "It's a magic moment. Our patients come back to the floor with new energy," she says. "Very often we look at our patients in a moment of despair, in a moment of confusion, because that's the way it is when you're in a hospital. It seems like when they see Kazzy, it has a healing effect. It's not curing, but it has a healing effect."
A dog of their own
Jim O'Brien, RN, has witnessed that healing effect of animals as well. The patient care manager of the pediatric oncology, bone marrow transplant, and rehab unit at UCSF Children's Hospital remembers one girl whom they let bring her dog from home into the hospital about a year ago. "The dog really helped calm her down. She was able to spend long hours away from her family," he says. "The dog was on her bed when she died."
Caring for another dog that visited the hospital also helped a 13-year-old boy through some behavioral issues. "That changed his view of being here in the hospital. People weren't always taking care of him — he could actually take care of something else. He became a lot more respectful, a lot more cooperative. You could just see the dramatic change in him from having this animal around," he says.
So he and Lila Param, RN, MS, director of pediatric patient care services, began looking into getting a dog exclusively for UCSF Children's Hospital. By working with the local Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (SPCA), they found a dog that met their specifications — an older, light-colored, small dog with hair, as opposed to fur. Izzy, a 3 1/2-year-old white poodle, met the specifications.
O'Brien adopted Izzy — whose name he changed from Tizzy — in February. He cares for her when she's not at the hospital. In late March, he began taking the dog with him to meetings to familiarize her with the facility. Now Izzy comes in once a week to work with a trainer from the SPCA and with the child life specialists, who handle her visits with patients. Right now she visits patients one day a week, but eventually, the plan is for Izzy to be at the hospital three days a week, accompanying children to procedures and helping ease their anxiety.
She has already become a celebrity. "If you're doing something with Izzy, you have to allow extra time, because when you walk down the hallway, everyone wants to stop and pet her and say hello. It's like accompanying a rock star," Param says. "It's so wonderful to see. She's just so uplifting."
Getting the policies and procedures in place for a pet therapy program can be quite a hurdle, she says. "Starting a program from the ground up is an incredible amount of work and requires a collaboration within your facility between administration, risk management, legal, infection control, and physicians so that everyone's on the same page."
Some of the questions you need to consider include:
- What are the criteria for a dog to enter the facility?
- What kind of vaccinations and health certificates do dogs need?
- Is the dog covered by an adequate insurance policy?
- How often do dogs need to be bathed and groomed?
- Who can the dog visit and under what circumstances?
- What is the procedure if the dog is present and an emergency ensues?
Param says they are looking for funds to hire a person dedicated to oversee the pet therapy program, as well as to expand it to include more dogs. The hospital is working on incorporating information about the dog visitation program on the inpatient admission form.
She encourages other facilities not to be overwhelmed by the work involved with developing a pet therapy program, because the results are well worth the effort. "The benefits of having pets have been so widely published that I don't think any nurse needs to be told how good it is for their patients," Param says. "It just makes their day. It changes everything. For those few minutes, it takes their minds off the procedure or their pain or the fact that they're not home and they're separated from their friends and their family. I can't say enough about it."
Not just horsing around
Therapeutic horseback riding — or hippotherapy — is another form of animal-assisted therapy. For the last eight years, Connie Merritt, RN, BSN, PHN, has volunteered at the J. F. Shea Therapeutic Riding Center in San Juan Capistrano, Calif.
The center has been around since 1978. However, Merritt, a self-employed professional speaker and writer, didn't hear about the center until she experienced a difficult time when her best friend, mother, and grandmother all died within 10 months of each other. "I just took a nosedive. I needed something spiritually," she says. "The Shea Center was exactly what I was looking for. It was outside, horses and kids, people who were doing good things. It just got me out of me. I've come to believe that stress and doing too much can be alleviated by giving yourself away."
Not only does she enjoy her volunteer involvement, but she has also seen how equine therapy itself helps the 220 clients the center serves each week. The diverse group of people range in age from toddler to octogenarian. Diagnoses include traumatic brain injury, spinal cord injury, developmental and cognitive disabilities, and autism. "Kids say their first words, take their first steps at the center. It's that miraculous," says Merritt, who serves as the community volunteer liaison.
Each client is evaluated by a specially trained physical therapist, who determines how to best use the horses in helping achieve therapeutic goals such as improved posture, balance, mobility, and function. Goals may center on facilitating cognitive, psychological, behavioral, and communication skills as well. Therapists select horses carefully to elicit desired results. "If someone is very flaccid, the core strength in their body would respond intuitively to a real choppy gait by tensing up a bit," Merritt says. Volunteers assist by leading the horse as directed, or walking by the equine's side as a safety precaution.
"The horses' hips work exactly like a human hip — front, back, sideways, and rotation. There's something really magical about your body being shown exactly how to walk through the motions of the horse's hips," she says. Merritt knows that from firsthand experience. When she had hip surgery, she was back on her horse in nine weeks. "I actually rehabbed myself on my own horse," she says. Now she is training her horse, Maggie Rose, for animal-assisted therapy.
Merritt advises pediatric nurses in particular to look in to equine therapy for their patients. "Nurses should know that it makes handicapped children just like any other kids. In fact, they might be doing something that other kids don't do. Do you know what that does for self-image and self-esteem?" she asks. "Even with autism and learning disabilities, parents report that after sessions the kids can concentrate, do their homework. Nurses need to know this is a modality that is so different, it might just help."
Courtesy, Gannett Healthcare Group.
(Posted December 6, 2007)