Knowledge mobilisation and impact on Patient Care - Working like a dog: exploring the Role of Animal-Assisted Therapy.
‘Wag & Company’, a charity which provides animal assisted therapy to older people, was launched in May 2016. The Charity matches and enables professionally assessed volunteers and their dogs, known as ‘Visiting Wag Teams’, to safely offer one to two hour visits per week to older people in a variety of different settings across the North East region. The initiative to investigate the benefits of pet therapy at North Tees & Hartlepool NHS Foundation Trust first came from a ward based therapy team working on the elderly care unit to help patients with dementia. Information gathered from the wider literature revealed evidence to support the benefits of ‘Animal Assisted Therapy’ in helping to reduce anxiety, improve physical health, cognitive function and overall health and well-being.…