Therapy dogs can ease young patients’ anxiety in the emergency room

About 10 minutes with a therapy dog soothed kids who felt anxious about being emergency room patients.

A clinical trial found that after spending time with a dog, young patients reported a significantly larger decrease in their anxiety than kids who didn’t have dog time. The patients’ parents also perceived significantly reduced anxiety in their kids, researchers report March 14 in JAMA Network Open.

Managing kids’ anxiety and pain while receiving emergency medical care is a key part of the treatment plan, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics. Many pediatric emergency departments have child life specialists, who explain procedures in developmentally appropriate ways and help young patients cope with stress through play therapy and other methods.

The new clinical trial, which took place at Riley Children’s Hospital in Indianapolis from early 2023 to mid-2024, investigated whether adding a dog therapy visit would calm young patients even further. Riley Children’s Hospital has a dog therapy program in place. The dogs are vaccinated, have yearly vet checks and are certified as therapy animals.

All 80 participants in the trial, admitted patients 5 to 17 years old, worked with child life specialists. Forty of the patients also spent around 10 minutes with a therapy dog and the dog’s handler. Kids who were fearful of dogs or had allergies to the animals were excluded from the trial.

The research team evaluated the kids’ anxiety, and parents’ perception of their kids’ anxiety, with the FACES scale, which shows a series of faces in different amounts of distress. The scale ranges from zero, or no anxiety, to 10, or very severe anxiety.

The baseline, self-reported score for all 80 patients was 5.4 on average. Forty-five minutes after time with the child life specialists and, for those receiving it, the dog therapy visit, the research team assessed anxiety again. The kids getting the usual care saw an average drop in their score of 1.5, while the kids who hung out with therapy dogs had an average drop of 2.7 points. The pattern held true when the parents of the kids assessed their kids’ anxiety over time.