According to the study, patients reduced their levels of pain and anxiety following the intervention with the therapy dog.
Dogs are one of the animals that share the most with humans. Even the love and affection that these animals give might relieve pain of some hospitalized patients.
So suggests a new study published Wednesday in the journal PLOS One prepared by Canadian experts, who analyzed the impact of dogs on emergency room users.
For this research we worked with regarding 200 people and their level of pain was evaluated on a scale from 1 to 10. Then they were divided into two groups and one of them received a 10-minute intervention with a trained dog called Murphy.
According to the study, when re-rating the level of pain in the patients, those who shared with Murphy expressed feeling a decrease in their ailments.
In some patients, the percentages of pain down 43% following the intervention with the trained animal. There were even users who decreased their feelings of anxiety by 48%.
Colleen Dell, lead author and professor at the University of Saskatchewandeclared to CNN that “there is research that shows that pets are an important part of our health in different ways. They motivate us, lift our spirits, (generate) routines, the human-animal bond”.
With these findings, the expert seeks to verify the effectiveness and positive impact that therapy dogs can deliver to patients in a medical context and integrate them into health teams.
Therapy dogs and other species
The participation of dogs in human therapy is not new. For years it has been practiced canotherapyinterventions in which these animals collaborate with therapists to treat psychological illnesses or in educational processes.
The origin of this technique dates back to the seventies, when Elaine Smith, an American nurse, observed surprising advances in the recovery of patients following the frequent visit of a Golden Retriever that accompanied the chaplain of the hospital where she worked.
Animals such as horses, cats, rabbits and even dolphins also participate in this type of therapy. At the national and international level there are different institutions and specialists dedicated to this work.