Therapy dogs in hemodialysis clinics may help patients adhere to treatment
Key takeaways:
- Therapy dogs in the hemodialysis clinic may help patients cope with ongoing treatment.
- Overall, 20 patients from four outpatient clinics participated in in-depth interviews.
Therapy dogs may help patients on hemodialysis better adhere to a treatment regimen, results from a new study show.
“Hemodialysis is a burdensome clinical process that demands frequent and long visits to the clinic every week indefinitely, yet strict adherence to its regimen is paramount to overall health and well-being,” Meredith L. Stensland, PhD, LMSW, of the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio, wrote with colleagues. “Animal-assisted interventions represent a family of structured, goal-oriented activities aimed at bringing about therapeutic gains in humans via intentional interaction with animals.”
Researchers conducted a qualitative study to explore attitudes on a clinic-based animal-assisted intervention (AAI) to improve treatment compliance among patients on in-center hemodialysis.
Overall, 20 patients from four outpatient clinics participated in in-depth, semi-structured one-on-one interviews to shed light on their experiences with clinic-based animal-assisted intervention.
Four main themes emerged from the findings, the researcher wrote, including the dread of endless treatment, yearning for the presence of therapy dogs at the clinic, therapy dogs aiding in the battle of treatment adherence and the logistics of incorporating therapy dogs into hemodialysis.
“This study improves not only our understanding of how patients [on hemodialysis] perceive clinic-based therapy-dog visits but also offers helpful insights for implementing this intervention in future research,” according to Stensland. “Incorporating therapy dogs into patients’ [on hemodialysis] health care routine may offer an innovative approach to improving patient outcomes, and the results of this study are a compelling prompt to empirically investigate the role of AAI in HD treatment adherence.”
Collapse
Read more about