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Pawprints is Children's Hospital Boston therapy dog visitation program, which provides hospitalized children and their families a healthy diversion from the usual hospital routine and an opportunity for social interaction.
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Hospitalized patients can get a dog visit if they meet certain criteria (such as no allergies or asthma) and a visit is approved by both the patient's physician and the parent/guardian. Currently, the therapy dogs may visit only specific inpatient areas.
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Dog visits are scheduled on a regular basis. Typically this schedule includes a visit once a week or every other week with selected floors. If you are interested in visiting with one of our dogs, talk to your Child Life Specialist or Recreation Therapist to see if they can plan the visit and obtain the necessary consent.
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Some of our dogs visit patient's rooms and some of them visit the resource rooms on the floors. Once the visit is scheduled, the patient decides how he or she wants to interact with the dog. The dogs may sit on the floor, a chair, or on a clean sheet on the patient's bed. The patient may pet, play with, talk to, or watch the dog. Siblings and other family members are encouraged to interact with the therapy dog as well. However, at no time may food be offered to any of the therapy dogs during a visit, since they are on the job! Before leaving for the day, every Pawprints dog is offered special treats by the hospital to say "thank you" for a job well done.
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The length of each visit varies depending on the number of patients to be visited that day, the preferences of the patient, and any of the patient’s health care needs (such as scheduled tests or procedures). Visits typically last between 5 and 10 minutes.
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Children’s Hospital volunteers from the community own the dogs. The dogs live with their family and visit the hospital twice a month with their owner. The dogs do not live at the hospital.
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Only dogs and volunteers who meet the hospital's requirements and have gone through the application process may visit. (Please note that these requirements do not apply to service dogs, which are allowed in the hospital.)
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Children's Hospital staff carefully reviewed available information to assure that the dog visits can occur in a hospital without increasing the chances of passing germs to patients. Unfortunately, this type of information is not currently available for other types of pets, which is why only dogs are allowed to visit with patients at this time.
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Special thanks to the Children's Hospital League for their generosity in helping support Pawprints. Make a gift to further support this special program.
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In the Spotlight
The Pawprints Program is conducting research to further validate the importance of the bond between dogs and patients, and to address the lack of data about dog visitation in pediatric acute care settings. Our study is two-fold, focusing on both quantitative and qualitative outcomes. First, we will collect reports from both the child and parent about the child’s mood. Second, we will videotape visits in an effort to fully document the physical and emotional interaction between the patient, family, dog and handler. We are very excited about this project because, to date, research on dog visitation has not incorporated the use of video. We believe that video will provide us with rich examples of the human-animal bond that one would not otherwise see.
We hope this research study will allow us to evaluate our current program more effectively, expand the program, and provide recommendations to other hospitals about dog visitation.
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