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Article: Pet therapy does more than break routine.
- Article from:
- Patient Education Management
- Article date:
- April 1, 2002
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2002 A Thomson Healthcare Company. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Pet therapy does more than break routine
Visits help with psychiatric and therapeutic issues
When a program to evaluate geriatric patients with dementia was established on the behavioral health unit at Wausau (WI) Hospital, one of the problems the organizers had was to find enough therapies for cognitively compromised patients. Research uncovered such activities as reading the newspaper, showing pictures of old appliances, and showing historical pictures of people, places, and events.
These therapies worked quite well, but staff still were hard-pressed to come up with more activities. Then a consultant suggested pet therapy explaining that it ...