New research investigates the impact of dog-assisted activities on students’ psychological wellbeing following high-intensity medical simulations.

Code blue rings out as a young medic pumps forcefully down on a patient’s chest. She’s swiftly followed by another who begins ventilating the helpless man, and then two more with a defibrillator. They work skilfully, coordinating their actions to cut away the man’s shirt in preparation for a shock, but it doesn’t come. Instead, a shrill siren fills the room as the patient’s heart rate flatlines, and the thread of life is cut.

This is a simulation of an emergency situation, used to prepare students for real-life crisis situations in their professional lives. As trauma-informed care becomes embedded throughout the healthcare system, it’s important to recognise the negative impact that high-intensity environments have on students’ mental health and learning ability. In an effort to improve simulation outcomes, a recent study investigated the therapeutic impact of dog-assisted activities on students’ post-simulation wellbeing, revealing a significant reduction in their anxiety and negative emotional affect.

New research into therapy dogs

The study included 45 students from three programs: Primary Care Paramedic, Respiratory Therapy and Animal Health. During the experiment, participants were exposed to a stress-inducing simulation of an emergency situation, after which they were randomly assigned to one of two intervention conditions. Students’ emotional responses (mood, stress, anxiety, confusion, sadness & anger) were measured on a scale before and after the interventions.

Dog-assisted activity: Participants petted, played with, or talked to a 9-year-old therapy dog and his handler for 2.5 minutes.

Diaphragmatic breathing exercise: Participants took part in a guided breathing exercise in a quiet, low-lit room for 2.5 minutes.

Study findings

Pre-intervention scores revealed that participants experienced moderate levels of stress, anxiety and confusion after the simulations. However, following the interventions, participants in both the dog-assisted activity group and diaphragmatic breathing group enjoyed a significant reduction in emotional distress.

Only students in the dog-assisted activity group experienced a significant reduction in their levels of anxiety. In particular, students from the Animal Health group responded especially strongly, perhaps caused by expectancy effects due to their passion for animals.

Future research would benefit from a larger sample size and long-term follow-up into the impact of dog-assisted activities on students’ mental health and learning outcomes. Researchers should also consider incorporating a ‘no intervention’ control condition to determine whether the decrease in emotional affect would have occurred without an intervention.

The impact of dog-assisted activities

The study highlights the potential of dog-assisted activities for managing students’ post-simulation distress, which may be more effective than traditional stress-management techniques like diaphragmatic breathing. As the use of high-intensity medical simulations continues to grow, animal-assisted activities provide a feasible and well-received tool to enhance students’ emotional recovery and create a better learning environment.

Key study findings:

• Participants were moderately anxious, stressed and confused before the intervention
• After both interventions, students experienced a significant reduction in emotional affect
• Only participants in the dog-assisted activity intervention experienced a significant reduction in anxiety
• Participants expressed a preference for the dog-assisted activity condition