Pet therapy for reducing stress and anxiety in hospitalised children

Abstract

Topic Overview: Each year a number of children are admitted in hospital for a variety of reasons. The hospital setting can bring about feelings such as anxiety and stress due to the fact of being in an unfamiliar setting. This dissertation aims to investigate if Pet therapy could be used in order to improve stress and anxiety in hospitalized children. Research question: Does Pet Therapy reduce stress and anxiety in hospitalized children? PICO elements: The population was hospitalized children, the intervention was pet therapy, while the control was any control group or standard care, and the desired outcome was reduction in stress and anxiety. Method: Multiple key terms, synonyms, tools such as Boolean operators and limiters were put in place in order to analytically search for studies on various databases, along with a manual search. Choice of studies included pet therapy, a control group, assessed stress and anxiety outcomes and only concentrated on hospitalized children. Additionally, only meta analyses, systematic reviews, and randomised controlled trials written in English were accepted. The literature found was then critically appraised using CASP tools. Results: Four key studies were identified. These consisted of 1 meta-analysis and 3 randomized controlled studies. Although not very the difference was not very significant both stress and anxiety from all the studies where still seen to be reduced. Conclusion: A definite answer to the research question put forward could not be conclude, this can only be done if further research is done on the. Nonetheless, Pet therapy is a possible intervention to decrease stress and anxiety in hospitalized children. Implications and Recommendations: Pet therapy can be implemented as an intervention in children’s hospitals or wards, handlers of animals can be given adequate training and guidelines on how to carry out these interactions. In comparison, in order to achieve better chances of improvements in stress and anxiety further studies can be done.