Canine Comfort: Buckeye Paws' Curative Role

yes yes foreign i hope you went to the yeah here um this is fish to um yes fishy so okay here oh um right here all right you know whatever foreign right now yes yes he's um who gets perfect they're rolling credits exactly do [Music] the columbus metropolitan club was founded in 1976 by 13 women leaders who wanted to be included in the community conversation i am sally bloomfield and i was one of those 13 women having been left out of men's clubs that focused on community issues it was a priority for us to make the club 100 inclusive today cmc presents public policy forums every wednesday at lunch with average attendance of more than 200 people i'm tony bell and i frequently attend forums which are open to everyone and present relevant current and newsworthy topics i'm grateful that cmc is nonpartisan and presents many perspectives on every topic i'm jane scott president and ceo of the columbus metropolitan club cmc's open to everyone we invite you to explore the personal and professional benefits awaiting you at the metropolitan club welcome to cmc welcome to cmc welcome to cmc welcome to cnc good afternoon and welcome to the columbus metropolitan club i'm steve marks chair of the cmc board of trustees and president of hannah news service here in columbus it's my pleasure to welcome our in-person audience today and to say hello to all of you who are watching via our live stream let's begin by meeting our new cmc members sarah bongiornio from planning next ali grew from kosai julia johnson doreen whitley rogers from esri carmine russo from realm collaborative and eric and mark wagon-brenner from the thrive companies let's welcome them we'd like to invite you to join cmc at just 16.95 a month for individuals cmc membership is an investment in yourself professionally and in our community your membership also supports the not-for-profit columbus metropolitan club cmc members like you inspire our wednesday forums and are a critical part of the community conversation thank you thank you to today's forum sponsors as well the ohio state university wexner medical center and health sciences colleges and today's cmc live streaming is presented by the emergency response fund of the columbus foundation in partnership with the columbus dispatch and pnc thank you all we'd like to also thank those of you who purchased a virtual seat for our forum today we're very grateful for your continued support you can learn more about cmc register for events join or renew your membership purchase a virtual seat or make a donation anytime at columbusmetroclub.org so right when they need it at most we were told to keep socially distant from the front line responders who are facing their most stressful days caring for those with covet 19. but at the ohio state university wexner medical center a new type of co-worker of a four-legged variety was stepping in to provide care and comfort and companionship today we'll hear how the innovative buckeye pro i'm sorry buckeye paws program is a bright light for nursing staff and patients and how research shows that programs with therapy animals improve the mental health and resiliency of critical care staff and other people in stressful environments i'll introduce the panelists by name and position you can find more about each of them in your forum flyer today please welcome dr ruston moore dmv phd diplomat acbs dean of the college of veterinary medicine he is also the ruth stanton chair in veterinary medicine at the ohio state medical unit at ohio state university michelle marlowe rn she's a nurse manager with the osu wexner medical center [Applause] and dr bernadette melnick phd there's a whole lot of initials she is vice president for health promotion university chief wellness officer professor in dean college of nursing at the ohio state university and our host today is gail hogan the famed journalist you all know but first beth steinberg staff wellness and development coordinator and co-founder of buckeye paws will give us a brief overview of the buckeye paws program and its creation beth thank you as he said my name is beth steinberg one of the co-founders of buckeye paws along with my work colleague mary justice buckeye paws is a therapy dog program that's solely dedicated to the health and well-being of our faculty and staff that work across the osu wexner medical center a couple years ago when mary and i were training our dogs we talked about how we might bring a program like this to support our staff health and well-being into the medical center knowing that you know we have a very difficult environment lots of sick patients we wanted to make sure it was safe interestingly enough a couple years ago about eight years ago to be exact that the concept of this program was started in our surgical intensive care unit by two nurses uh who had a passion for therapy dogs they watched as nurses were benefiting from the therapy dogs that actually came in to see the patients they saw their mood lightened they saw them laugh and smile they actually saw their anxiety lesson so they did a little mini study presented it nationally at our national teaching institute for the american association of critical care nurses and mary and i took those concepts and built the buckeye paws program that you know of today emily lewis one of our surgical intensive care u nurses and her therapy dog ellie were the third dog of our founding team of three that started in march of 20 so right before the pandemic we now have 13 team members buckeye paul some of them are here today with us all of them have day jobs they're all employees of the medical center all of them volunteer their time to support their colleagues health and wellness um i will recognize lindsey pufferly she does not have a therapy dog but she's a very busy or nurse and mom who follows us around as our official buckeye paws photographer so she's snapping photos today she documents us wherever we go and then amy mitchell our brand new program coordinator for the program is here with us today our first paid employee who does everything for us behind the scenes from recruitment scheduling and she is also our social media guru so we do have an instagram account for buckeye paws so our current plans include expansion into the health sciences colleges and then future plans to expand across the osu campus for students and faculty there so thank you again gail thank you all and yes it is a joke that we've heard very often that you are never supposed to share the stage with children or dogs well today the show is going to the dogs but in a good way and we appreciate that and beth when you said they have day jobs the first i thought you meant the dogs i went oh well they sleep i suppose i don't know what else their job would be research has shown that animals in general are great stress relievers and stress relief was the reason for the formation of the buckeye pause program as we just heard so today we're taking a look at some of the research to discuss the emotional and mental challenges of working in a hospital environment specifically during the pandemic and ways to relieve that stress and burnout and dr melnick i'm going to start with you because you have some wonderful insight into the stresses that these folks feel that it's placed on doctors nurses medical staff what has your research shown i first would like to start with the dose of vitamin g for gratitude to marry and beth and all of the whole team because you all are pioneers and these dogs have brought so much stress relief and improved mood to our clinicians even before the pandemic the national academy of medicine declared a public health epidemic because the mental health depression burnout stress suicide of doctors nurses and other health care clinicians was so high then the pandemic hit and now we have a mental health pandemic inside of the covid19 pandemic my team did a national study of critical care nurses last year we found such high rates of depression 40 of the critical care nurses were suffering with depression 52 with clinical anxiety and 60 reported poor quality of life yet the nurses who perceived that their work sites supported their wellness had much better physical and mental health outcomes so we at ohio state i'm not sure how many of you know but we were the first university in the country to appoint a chief wellness officer and my job is to improve the mental health the physical health and the well-being of faculty staff clinicians and students all across campus we truly are a model for other universities and academic medical centers across the country with what we do well for those who think something like a wellness officer isn't necessary you can just ask someone like michelle who was on the first lines of defense for covid patients continues to do so michelle can you share some of your experiences of what you went through and continue to go through good afternoon it's not morning um our experiences in our unit um we had some really long days long hours um at one point we were a hundred percent fully cova-positive and at that point we needed to decide how were we going to support our staff our staff members were working long hours they were stretched really thin very stressed how could they even debrief de-stress what does that even look like when they go home what does that look like we are in the midst of a pandemic some of them couldn't even be with their loved ones a lot of times so there was a lot of weight and the burden that our nurses were covering so um now that we had the uh buckeye paws a lot of times they would come to the unit sometimes the visits would be brief but just if you could read the room you could just see that there was just a sense of relief sometimes it was just a view from the door a nurse would be within the room with the doors shut fully garbed and all their covert attire but um it was just that little bit of an interaction just to see the dogs when we got to the point where they were more hands-on and the dogs were on the unit and they could be loved and petted and and all of that you'd see more staff on the floors even though you would sometimes be like no don't sit on the floor the floor is dirty but a lot of times it's that's just how it happens and so sometimes there are very specific people who are requesting certain dogs by name because there's a special connection there other times it's just knowing that they're coming and then they're really excited and some people sometimes aren't necessarily dog lovers but they love having the dogs there because they can feel that sense of enjoyment that euphoric of feeling when their peers are around the dog so those are some of the experiences that we've had thank you nichelle and the pups are back there in case you haven't seen them there's a few tail wags otherwise they kind of look pretty bored with what we're talking about up here dr moore this now worked to you because we're talking about pets um not just dogs but animals as comfort creatures you've had a lot of experience with that what have you found well there is a term that's been coined called zoeya z-o-o-e-y-i-a and it's really a term that really talks about the importance of the interaction of people with a pet on their health and that's physical mental social behavioral emotional and psychological so the things that i'm going to talk about today are really i'm going to talk about why the the emotional part and really it it does change brain chemistry so if you are interacting with a pet even intermittently petting holding or even gazing into the eyes of a pet or a dog you will your brain will release both dopamine and serotonin which are feel good hormones it also you also release oxytocin oxytocin is sort of that bonding hormone that mothers and their children um that's released it's released in both the mother and the baby it actually happens in for the fathers too when they're interacting uh so those things and then there's also a decrease in cortisol and the good news is you don't have to have a pet or stay with it all the time that intermittent interaction really does help so that's uh that's really the the reason behind it at least based on the research um and you know i have to imagine and and i was trying to look this up before i came but you know post-traumatic stress syndrome affects about eight percent of people in the u.s and about 30 percent of veterans and i don't know what the percent i'm sure bern can uh share that with us what the percent of of health care workers have ptsd post-traumatic stress syndrome or stress symptoms and you know that can happen for a variety of traumatic reasons it doesn't have to be simply a combat zone or a natural disaster so if you think about what people might have been going through before the pandemic and whatever baseline level of ptsd there was i would imagine the ptsd level went way up and that's because people nursing other healthcare workers were you know seeing a lot of really seriously ill and dying uh people dying uh in the absence of their loved ones and the nurses and others were the conduit or the liaison of that you know saying goodbye sort of thing and all these other things so if you think about it and this is my last comment on this topic for now um there is a study that was that has shown when you unite a veteran who has ptsd with a a service dog or a therapy dog they have fewer psychiatric symptoms and less severe symptoms less substance abuse and they require fewer medications and lower doses of medications to manage the ptsd so i'm trying to take that analogy and apply it across which is i know very different but you know ptsd is ptsd caused by different things so i'd love to hear what dr malnick says about that because we did not rehearse this well dr melnick you are a big believer in advocating for stress relief for the health workers because of things like you know ptsd a program like buckeye paws does your research show that it has a long-term effect or is it just a feel-good moment it definitely has a longer-term effect i have to address rustin he's my dear friend and buddy but we have a philosophy and that is in god we trust but everybody else better bring data to the table and and write preston isn't that correct so what we do at ohio state is from a strong evidence base that doesn't mean we don't innovate too like buckeye paws but for an innovation to really stick you gotta gather evidence behind it and i'm committed to working with mary and beth and the team to get more wonderful data on buckeye paws we've got studies to show long-term good mental and physical health outcomes from interacting with pets i'm a pet lover so when mary first brought shiloh to my office i by the way have two character building pugs in my house but and my daughter isn't equine vet so i i am a big believer of pet therapy but it does have fabulous evidence behind it that's crazy that's great it's wonderful nichelle you experienced a lot excuse me a lot of stress and some of your co-workers around the country left the job of nursing because of the stress and dealing with kovid how did you stay on the job and continue on the job and move forward um i would believe that it was really based upon my team i had to stand strong and be there to support our team for whatever they needed so i feel like that was my place and that's where how i stayed strong is to be strong for them did you get reciprocated from them knowing that you all worked together as a team i think more than ever during this pandemic that's where we pulled together the most i think that's where our teamwork really shined dr moore we've been talking about dogs but what about other animals for comfort companions do they all work the same is it different i mean and what other animals are suited for this actually probably just about any animal and if you think about this around the world different cultures you know have different views about different species of animals but you know in the u.s dogs and cats tend to be the most common pets and but there's a lot of research actually also on cats improving and certainly there's so much evidence this continues to build so for example those individuals who have dogs and this is by three different studies out of sweden have higher survival after stroke or heart attack if they have a pet and there's also evidence uh the same with cats at least in women um with i think with with regard to heart disease so other species um also so it could be you know a turtle or whatever i mean hedgehog guinea pig parakeet the other thing i just want to mention before i forget is you know you might think well this probably doesn't happen in veterinary medicine because we have dogs around us all the time actually it's just the same we have a very high rate of depression anxiety burnout suicidal ideation and one of the highest levels of suicide of any profession i was talking to a colleague of mine today at the university of florida and he just they conducted a study a validated instrument tool and 60 of his faculty in a clinical department had a level that was at or above burnout and you know that happened during the pandemic but it was probably there before and as you all probably have heard locally but this is nationally there's a shortage of veterinarians there's a shortage of veterinary nurses there's long wait times to get in long wait times in er rooms that adds stress to everybody including the people trying to provide the care so there's something about a therapy dog and not so much a dog and i don't mean one that's just a therapy dog but you know if you have a really sick dog in an icu i'm not sure you're getting that same positive benefit because that's your patient just like if you're treating a human patient so i think that's something and i just wanted to acknowledge sally malloret back there raise your hand uh she's been coming to our college for for years with first max her therapy dog and now fiona um and so that's something that you know we used to have wellness wednesdays and have um fiona come over so even veterinarians who who interact with animals all the time still can benefit but in different ways than with their patients i just wanted to add that for a while before the pandemic i volunteered at the ohio state medical center at the ross in one of the waiting rooms and the pups would come to visit the patients but it was the people in the waiting rooms who had no idea how their loved one was doing in the surgical procedure they were anxious and stressed out and what a relief it was for those people so it's not just for medical staff too it's for your patients it's for people who are in waiting rooms it's it's amazing and dr melanick back to the stress that these folks are under besides something like a comfort companion what other ways do you know that would help reduce stress for some of the medical staff or veterinary students or or anyone in the medical field i first want to point on we take a comprehensive integrative approach to health and well-being for faculty staff and students we are seriously resource rich at ohio state compared to a lot of different places throughout the country because not all interventions work for the same people so you've got to tailor your approaches we have several wonderful evidence-based programs at ohio state for faculty clinicians students and and it's really important to also emphasize culture culture each strategy for breakfast lunch and dinner seriously you could have the best programs available but if your culture is not one of wellness people's behaviors their stress levels are still going to be high the other thing gail if i can just mention why is clinician mental and physical health so important i'm not sure everybody here is aware but preventable medical heirs are now the third leading cause of death in this country often made by caring well-meaning clinicians that are burnt out exhausted depressed so clinician well-being adversely if it's poor can affect the quality and safety of health care so that's why again we invest to the level that we do at ohio state in wellness michelle what does support like that mean to you and your colleagues the sky's the limit uh we do we are blessed to have tons of resources at the medical center um sometimes i know that i did the health athlete course and so there were resources that i wasn't even aware about but now we're receiving that information on the medical center side so it just adds to a vast more of resources that we have available to us are these classes that you're talking about interventions yes yes athlete is an energy management program so how many of you would like to have more energy that sustains throughout your day so if you're interested in learning more about this fabulous energy management program please contact me we have put so many clinicians leaders faculty and staff through that program with fantastic outcomes so we've been talking about medical staff dr moore why do you think it is that medical staff seem to suffer so much from stress and anxiety is it the fact that they are dealing with life-and-death death situations many times is that critical well i think uh i think that um yes i would say it's it's dealing with life and death it's dealing with the emotions of family members it's dealing with the emotions of the the people who are ill it's dealing with things in their personal life and all these trigger stacking things that that pile on and you know it's it's many times it's true in human health and veterinary health it's let's see one more case one more patient one more patient and it does impact the quality of care that you can give and i think people in the health care profession are very caring compassionate people and they feel the stress of not being able to do their best work because of either the pace short staffed overworked whatever it might be so i think that's probably uh some of the things that contribute to that and um it's it's no different as i said in in veterinary medicine uh and in fact uh in some ways worse because um you know they have to deal with the fact that a a dog or a cat that comes in on an emergency for example that that person was not planned or prepared for because it was an emergency very few people have pet insurance in the u.s about less than four percent and so a lot of euthanasias occur not because of the illness the seriousness of the illness or the injury but because of lack of resources that can just go that can build and have a tremendous negative impact on the well-being of the staff that are having to deal with that i'm not sure who's best to answer this dr moore dr melnick but other than the fact oh you are good friends he's calling you out um we know that uh like a dog is soft and cuddly and cute but what's the research behind why patients why staff react so positively to these animals well i'll talk to you i'll give my um first of all uh a dog is a is a conversation waiting to happen and so and so let's let's go outside the health care system go to your neighborhood i walk a lot and if i walk alone people are looking down not making eye contact etc when there's when i have my two dogs with me they're crossing the street to get to me or to the dogs so you know i think in times of social isolation in particular and all you know people who work long hours just having a non-medical person to communicate with and talk about whatever is helpful and i it all i mean anything that happens in our body there's some biochemical reason it is happening and i won't repeat all the things that i said before but i think it's it's the release of all of those um you know either the release or the decreased release of all those hormones and other chemicals that really is why we feel how we feel when we're near a pet i think people forget sometimes that we have brief evidence-based tactics that we can all do to decrease our stress pet interaction is one a dose of vitamin g when i started with that for gratitude i mean we've got so many studies that show if we would all just wake up first thing in the morning last thing at night think of two or three people we're grateful for we have scientific evidence behind that too abdominal deep breaths taken several times during the day we've got so much evidence on that too but behavior change is character building believe me i really know that firsthand but to get back to pets just that brief inner action can cut the sympathetic nerve stimulation and really just help people to calm down in that moment and that's why it's critical we sustain this buckeye pause program and enhance it even more well our pets don't talk back so that is also something that's important one thing i wanted to also say is and for those of you who are in the health care whether and i'll say human health care field there is evidence that if if the health care worker asks the patient early on in their interaction do you have a pet they will you will build trust with them much quicker they will re reveal information that they might not have revealed before that helps you hopefully be more accurate in your diagnostic approach and not going down a wrong pathway so if people aren't doing that or it's not a standard part i would encourage that the other thing we know is people will do for their pet what they won't do for themselves so let's say i go in and and my doctor says you have cardiac disease which i don't but you have cardiac disease and you need to walk and lose 20 pounds which i do need to do that um if my veterinarian and i don't treat my own pets if my veterinarian told me i need to walk teddy and travis and have them each lose five pounds i would do that and get the secondary benefit so i encourage health care professionals to prescribe pets in for certain reasons integrate them into your prevention your therapy or whatever and you will probably have better compliance if i can add to that resident eye and social work have a program called pop care pet owner and pet care we send inter-professional teams of students out to the homes of seniors with chronic disease and their pets and these students as an inter-professional team take care of the people and the pets together as one family it's it's fantastic it's the first model like that in the country michelle we've talked about how dogs have helped you your other staff so we think the pandemic's over but we know it's it's not and there's a new variant so how do you go in every day with a positive attitude or how do you still walk through those doors knowing that you'll be able to take care of your patients that day well secretly we always look to see how many covet positives we have each day while we're always watching the news prior to to see kind of what with the area what's what's in ohio what are our numbers but there is that overarching fear that we will hit a second surge or third surge essentially with the non-vaccinated population we'll just take on what comes you know we'll pull our buckle strings tighter and we'll do what we need to do in order to get through it again and support each other dr melnick any wise words from you as we end this regarding stress in the workplace especially for the medical workers and if we go back to another covid predicament self-care is not selfish when we get on a plane and those oxygen masks drop we are told put them on yourself first before you can help others clinicians they want to do such great work in their caring for other people but they often sacrifice their own health and well-being self-care isn't selfish we cannot continue to pour from an empty cup so we've got to encourage each other even if it's just five or ten minutes a day do something for yourself your own health and well-being because you'll be so much more effective with your families and your patients i'm going to take this home with me self-care is not selfish i love that thank you dr melnick wait i just i'm glad you said that because i've been waiting for an opportunity to say think about what simone biles just did that was self-care she wasn't selfish meaning she didn't go out there look you know one more time to get another medal and you know i know she's getting a lot of criticism from some but that to me is a is a very public example of taking care of your physical and your mental health uh and if she's not well others in her arena her team her family are not well so uh thank you for giving me that no thank you for sharing i want to remind everyone we're going to move to questions shortly in person and live stream with just a few minutes um but i do have a question and i'm not sure dr moore you could answer this but you know we've seen these lovely dogs and they are very well trained not every dog can do this right or not every handler knows how to hit you know train their dogs so how do you train a pup and how do you know certain animals got what it takes well um i am not a dog trainer or a dog whisperer and anybody that's been around my dogs know that if they were here without any other dogs they would be running from table to table looking for pets not treats if they were here and those dogs were back there they would be barking constantly but um you know there there are ways to you know and a lot of it's around positive reinforcement um and i again i'm not a dog trainer but a lot of these dogs that go through therapy training um or service dog training go through a very regimented program that that probably one of them could talk about uh and have to get certified so it's not just well i have a nice dog and he's calm there's more to it than that um i would not be a good dog trainer do we have a question step up to the microphone please lainey i'll give it to you thanks gail um i'm curating some questions from our live stream audience as well barbara ray from the city of dublin asks how do you determine where and how the dogs will interact with people when your organization is bringing them she's asking this because she wonders if certain individuals might be afraid of dogs have allergies etc and if that would be a liability so i'm going to have my sister answer this question mary [Laughter] first of all just let me say what a pleasure it is to be here appreciate the vitamin g and i am grateful to be here it's one of the neatest things i've been able to do in my career over 30 years and so the answer to the question about first of all yes there's always cultural and personal beliefs around dogs and we've got to be thoughtful of that and so we're very cognizant when working through and walking through the health care facility and also on campus because we are expanding into the university with dr moore and dr melnick's help we really are we look for people how they actually react to the dogs i have had people i get off the elevator and i have shiloh and i have people that have backed up against the wall and and really let me know that they were afraid and so what i'm cognizant of that we train our handlers put the dog behind them back up against the wall and tell them we will not come near you you are safe and so we do those kind of things um i forget the rest of the question though was that it yeah so it's very important that you respect cultures uh and personal beliefs as well as allergies so we do have people sometimes that say hey we're allergic um it but it happens so very rarely for us so we're very fortunate in that the one thing i will say about our program too is we do have a master k9 trainer to dr morris point about training the dogs we actually interact with that master k9 trainer more than four times a year and they she re-certifies our team annually so thank you thank you mary behavioral assessments of dogs before they are put into those programs and i'm not sure if yours does but clearly these are behaviorally sound dogs we also do a fabulous job of tracking outcomes by college unit so i'm able to tell mary and beth these are the two or three colleges that are experiencing really high levels of stress or depression so we can prioritize how we will mobilize the dogs carol hi carol mcguire i'm a lifelong dog owner actually i think the dogs have owned me over time but i've understood and and been very grateful for all of the companionship that i've had from these dogs and i've understood for a long time how important they are and how grateful i am to have had them in my life but it's only been really in a relatively short period of time that we've come to understand the importance of these companion animals what barriers may still exist with regard to gaining you know 100 acceptance of the part that these uh animals play in our lives well i think like anything 100 acceptances might be more than we can expect however there will be people who are always you know maybe they're afraid of dogs maybe they had a bad experience as a child you know they walk down the sidewalk and some you know not even a mean dog but a big dog ran out of the parking lot to or the park the driveway to greet the child but that's not how it was interpreted so there's there's there are going to be issues around fear there are going to be issues around the fear of allergies which uh you know most of that at least with dogs is not not uh as severe certainly people have more severe allergies at times to cats or cat dander um i think it all comes down to evidence like like burns said so the more we can do and the more studies we can conduct uh one about the safety so you know the safety of bringing a dog into say an oncology ward where people are immunocompromised or something like that the more studies that can be done uh to show evidence of safety and effectiveness i think is how you do it and at least for those who believe in science and evidence and that and that's the way i would approach it also some concerns from leaders in terms of work interruption but it's like anything else if you take brief recovery breaks during the day to recharge a little bit you're going to be so much more engaged and productive in your work but these things that rustin and i have just pointed out it takes good evidence to show the leaders to talk with people about and we will continue to gather that evidence thank you you know some i don't know if their studies are anecdotal but it's consistent one thing is university presidents who have a dog are viewed to be more approachable i think that's probably true of united states presidents many of them have had dogs and some that bite she said it's not i didn't say all all right this is for nichelle as a clinical manager what new things have you learned about supporting your front line workers over the past 18 months that you will apply heaven forbid that you go through another wave or even just in the future regardless i think one of the main takeaways there is that we saw that stretching our time frame and having presence there we stretched our schedules we were there seven days a week of course we couldn't be there 24 hours a day but i think the presence of being there with our staff members and them knowing that we're there for them for whatever needs to happen and i think the increased communication during the midst of our pandemic is what really was beneficial for everyone sherry hubbard from an online question asks can you say something about the role of companion animals in assisting those who are grieving a lost loved one could this apply to clinicians who have also lost long-term patients i would well go ahead you go it's for you [Laughter] that's a very in-depth question but i would say definitely they would benefit you can expand on that well a lot of this is anecdotal but i mean i you know in talking for example with uh sally who i mentioned earlier and she takes fiona to hospitals uh and many other places for the patients or elder care facilities or things like that and um i do believe it probably is have does have an impact probably the same way it has the impact that we've already talked about in helping someone you know get over the loss of a pet or the loss of a loved one we actually we have an embedded social worker in our veterinary medical center who is there for our clients and we've had this program it's called honoring the bond since 1997. several other schools now have it but it's really there to help our clients make as they're making difficult decisions about you know end of life etc but also it also relieves the burden or some of the burden from the clinical staff from needing to sit with the person for two hours which the person needs but they have other patients to be taken care of so you know i think there's many ways that we can help those people with through grieving of a loss of a pet one or a person hi mimi dain former ceo at flying horse farms um a camp for children with serious illnesses and when when i was there we had a canine program for our campers that campers range from children with heart disease cancer a gastrointestinal disease and that the children would take the dogs through agility programs and the dogs were there to greet them to what extent are there studies about the effect that programs like that are helpful to children who are going through their own version of trauma there's a lot of evidence on this type of interaction and therapy with children with chronic illness in particular it's overwhelmingly thank positive yeah there's a study of uh seven to eight-year-olds and not necessarily uh youth with those illnesses but that um of kids in the seven to eight year range interacting with pet builds their confidence they serve as a confidant so they will tell their dog or their cat their little secrets that they're not going to tell to someone else and it builds builds confidence self-confidence and a sense of independence you know and in the case of that you're talking about my guess the fact that a child that may be confined to a medical facility or confined to a wheelchair or whatever being able to go out and have that agility dog have them you know have that dog go through the agility course probably has really positive uh dr impact those children don't have a lot of control over what is happening in their life and this is something they can't control another live stream question this is from megan reel what measures are in place to protect the health and safety of the participating dogs in buckeye paws so first and foremost we do have to care both for our our partners that we bring with us our canine partners and also this the safety of our staff as well as patients and so um we actually are so fortunate to have uh dr ruston moore and his team at the veterinary college of medicine he actually has his own epidemiologists and others who are looking at the interaction between covid and other infectious problems between what can be carried into facilities given to dogs and what can dogs you know take with them so we've been very very interactive with them around some of the issues that came especially around covid and so we made sure that we did a lot of wiping down of our dogs we have sanitary wipes we make sure that especially paws anywhere that an individual has touched the dog they have to be wiped down between visits and we always say to our staff my friends over here know this please make sure that you wipe your hands before we pet the dog and wipe the hands after we pet the dog just like we would with going in and out of any room and so we have had i mean i shouldn't say real out loud but we've had absolutely no issues with the animals they also have to have their annual veterinary checks just like you know we make sure they go through all of those shots and we actually have a record an employee record on every single one of the animals and so we are very stringent on making sure that the animals are protected as well as our staff and our patients and one thing i will say just kind of to go back to one of the questions about end of life this year has been tough on our staff in terms of dealing with end of life and i just want to thank our we have some of our micu staff here that is sitting with us as well as our management team and our chief nurse they have done an amazing job of supporting each other but we know also that they have been stretched and i have seen the ability of the animals as they are dealing with the family but also with families um they have that the dogs interact very very well with some of those end of life issues so i've been witness to it so i can answer that a little bit so thank you well round of applause for our medical healthcare workers that are here thank you for what you have done and continue to do last question that's a great example of real life interprofessional practice where members of the healthcare team everybody is working together and we are focused on that at ohio state across all the health sciences plus others so um just thought that was a good really good example of something happening in real life hi my name is pat rhodes and i don't know if it's just in my family where the dogs are on antidepressants and anxiety meds or i don't know if that's the way to treat the dogs who are having those problems or if there's a better way i guess that's me um you know dogs like like people were they're all different and some of them do have various behavioral uh or mental health issues you know some of them in older dogs there is something called canine cognitive dysfunction and that's essentially dementia but there are ones that have fearful or fears they're fearful of thunder they're fearful of another dog they are protective of their food bowl they're you know all sorts of things and so i would say the best thing to do would be to work with your veterinarian and or if there's things that are beyond that that you know it's just it's a difficult situation there are actually veterinary behavioral medicine specialists that that's all they focus on um and we have those employed uh there's not very many of them around but we do have them uh in our facility and they about 90 of the cases they see are actually dogs not in 10 cats and of those most of them are because of some level of fear or aggression toward another animal toward a person etc question and thank you all as always i wish we had more time i'm gonna hand it back to steve well i hope you enjoyed today's forum i went out looking for dog puns but it was rough so but it was possible ah there's two please make plans to join us next wednesday as cmc presents game changer the new ncaa name image and likeness rules our thanks to our forum sponsor the osu media wexner medical center and health sciences colleges and to the emergency response fund of the columbus foundation for presenting our live stream in partnership with the columbus dispatch and pnc and thank you to our virtual seat patrons as well our special appreciation and thanks to our speakers rusted moore nichelle marlowe bernadette melnick and our host gail hogan and special thanks to mary justice and beth steinberg for bringing shiloh and his team unfortunately i can't be like oprah and say everyone gets a puppy but thank you for joining us we could not do this without you we we do look forward to seeing you next wednesday as the columbus metropolitan club presents another community conversation thank you excellent job [Music] you

Channel: Metro Club

Views: 78

Rating: 5 out of 5

Keywords:

Id: Q97NvJZin8M

Length: 69min 35sec (4175 seconds)

Published: Wed Jul 28 2021