Residents in an Edmonton long-term care home are getting regular visits from therapy dogs this summer, thanks to a pilot project designed by University of Alberta nursing researcher Brittany DeGraves.
The project builds on DeGraves' recently-published research on the feasibility of using animal-assisted programs to benefit both residents and staff.
"Bringing even a small moment of home for the individuals in care homes is addressing not only mental health but also social isolation," DeGraves says. "No matter what age or what conditions we have, we all deserve to live a life with joy. And I think that's something that is often missing in long-term care."
DeGraves cites research that shows 69 per cent of residents in Canadian long-term care homes have dementia and 87 per cent have some form of cognitive impairment.
For her feasibility study, she interviewed 14 long-term care staff, two long-term care residents and two community members, one an animal therapy volunteer and one a person living with dementia.
They agreed that bringing pets into long-term care settings can improve the social isolation, mental health, and well-being of the older adults living there.
"More rigorous research into this potentially important non-pharmacological intervention is urgently needed," concludes DeGraves, who is a PhD candidate under the supervision of Dr. Carole Estabrooks, principal investigator for the Translating Research in Elder Care Team.
This summer's pilot project will take a rigorous clinical trial approach, starting in one care home and continuing in another in the fall. Volunteers and their dogs from the St. John's Ambulance Therapy Dog Program will visit some residents on a regular basis over six weeks. They will be compared with a group that receives human-only visitation and a usual care group.
"I'll be looking at the trends in resident outcomes including perceived benefits and measures such as residents' quality of life from pre- to post-intervention," she says. "Then hopefully building this into a much larger project with standardized guidance for how these programs should be delivered."
