Recent research has captured the benefits of including facility dogs into inpatient physical therapy.

Following a stroke or surgery, it’s common for patients to participate in neurological rehabilitation to help them regain physical function and to increase their independence. This rehabilitation is often intense, pushing people to their limits and beyond, at a time when confidence and motivation are often low. Subsequently, physical therapists frequently experience challenges around patient engagement, which has a detrimental effect on their recovery and long-term health outcomes.

It is for this reason that a recent study investigated the use of facility dogs to enhance patient engagement in physical therapy, in a hospital setting. Facility dogs are not the same as therapy dogs, they are specially trained dogs who work alongside healthcare professionals. In this experiment, a dog named Fern was integrated into patients’ physical therapy sessions to see if she had any effect on their participation and experience.

Facility dogs in rehabilitation

The study included 69 adult participants who were inpatients at a rehabilitation hospital in Maryland. Participants were in the process of recovering from health conditions, including a stroke, orthopaedic injury and cardiac events. Each participant experienced a rehabilitation session where they performed physical tasks, such as football or ring toss, with and without a facility dog, who performed trained tasks such as returning the rings.

Since participants were randomly assigned to experience the dog intervention in the first or second session, the study was a randomised controlled trial design — considered gold-standard in clinical research. During the sessions, the researchers measured how long participants performed each task, as well as their self-rated pain and exertion, and physiological measures, such as heart rate and blood pressure. They also answered open-ended questions about their experience.

Improved engagement

The results revealed that patients persisted significantly longer at physical tasks in the presence of the facility dog, compared to when Fern was not present. This increase was greatest for participants who did not own dogs themselves. However, no reported reductions in pain and exertion ratings were observed. In fact, participants’ pain ratings and heart rate were slightly higher, likely due to participants exerting themselves more.

Overall, these findings suggest that facility dogs can play a valuable role in rehabilitation settings. The presence of a facility dog did not enhance patients’ physical exertion through reducing their pain levels, but instead provided strong motivation and encouragement. The study demonstrates how facility dogs can offer a non-pharmacological intervention to boost patient engagement in physical therapy.

Key study findings:

• Patients persisted longer at physical activity in the presence of a facility dog
• Patients who did not own dogs responded especially strongly
• Participants’ pain ratings and heart rate increased when a facility dog was present