"Animals as Healers: Exploring the Use of Therapy Animals in Health Setting"

This paper examines the role animals (primarily canines) have in patients' lives in regards to their recovery. With a constantly evolving medical system, animals are a novice method for health improvement and maintaining the wellbeing of their human counterparts. With gaining popularity, animals are changing the standards of medicine and influencing multiple aspects of healthcare from general to psychiatric. Looking at a wide range of studies, there are multiple positive results and support for animals as health aids that put them beyond the construct of “pet”and ensure their increasing value for the future.

History has demonstrated that the relationship between animals and human beings has been continuously evolving, especially in a way that positively influences the faculties of the human race. From simple domestication to more recent specialization that demonstrates anything from security forces to medical training, there is a need for animals that exceeds their previous roles of herders and hunters. Evaluating multiple studies in a variety of settings, Abigail de Reyna determines the importance of animals in the field of medicine, and points at the future trajectory of medicine when considering animals as a form of health aids in her paper “Animals as Healers: Exploring the Use of Therapy Animals in Health Setting.”, specifically differentiating the  roles animals have within their respective health career.

Abigail de Reyna is a Catholic University graduate from the year 2022. During her time at CUA she earned her Bachelors of Science in Nursing. Abigail now works as a pediatric nurse in the ICU, and lives her passion that was cultivated when she was a child in need of medical treatment. While de Reyna was not an initial fan of animals, it was during an internship between her junior and senior year at CUA that she was exposed to therapy animals that made rounds with nurses. de Reyna said, “Between seeing that first hand and knowing the effect that pet therapy can have on human connections, I decided to look into this further.” Going further, de Reyna even got her own pet dog recently. She stated, “I noticed how my interest changed because of that and how it affected me, so considering that and what I saw at the hospital it made me interested.”

Although therapy and support dogs are trained to alleviate the stress of their owners as well as notice signs of an episode whether it be mental, neurological or physical, such as an anxiety attack to fainting/falling asleep due to narcolepsy, they can provide support in any setting. de Reyna recalled, “I worked on the GI floor (gastrointestinal), it wasn't even psych, so seeing that animals helped patients with any kind of disorder or pain and made patients happier was something that I was interested in.” Studying hard sciences, de Reyna was not used to writing lengthy research papers, and so looking into this aspect of health was a welcoming challenge that turned out to be fruitful. In fact, de Reyna did not expect to come across many articles investigating this topic. de Reyna said, “There’s still a lot to be done with the research, but finding that there is already a great foundation, I was very surprised.” 

Knowing medicine aims to constantly improve upon itself, taking novice approaches such as utilizing animals as a form of therapy really provokes questions of how society will change to accommodate these changes. When asked what future questions de Reyna had as a result of her research as well working in the medical field she stated, “How does pet therapy impact the nursing staff and prevent burnout?” While patients receive support from animal services, it would be practical to research how animals impact health care professionals. This also then leads to questions about implications for having support animals in other settings as well. de Reyna hopes that her research will spark interest in other healthcare facilities and schools, due to the impact that is still unrecognized or unknown by many organizations. de Reyna ended with, “I hope people would want to bring this type of research into their own field and really evaluate how it impacts it.”

Read Abigail de Reyna’s piece, “Animals as Healers: Exploring the Use of Therapy Animals in Health Setting”, in the upcoming issue of Inventio Volume 8