Everything that makes the hospital stay easier for children is welcome. Recreational activities, hospital classrooms, clowns ... There are many ways to encourage patients, and now the Hospital Sant Joan de Déu has therapeutic dogs to help children.
Those responsible for the canine unit for patient care are professionals from the Center for Assisted Therapies with Dogs (CTAC), consisting of five animals that have been trained to help patients during their recovery and to cope with some medical tests.
In this hospital, therefore, these special dogs are allowed to enter since they make the impact of children in that environment less. Those responsible for this unit point out that the dog is an element that generates emotions in the child and it makes the process less traumatic.
In practice, they have found that for example in the emergency department it is easier to take a route to children if there is one of these dogs. Although of course it will be cases in which the little ones are not afraid of these animals, because I imagine my oldest daughter in the same case and I think it would be easier without the dog ...
Dogs visit the waiting rooms every day to distract children, collaborate with emergency personnel to entertain patients and also collaborate in the rehabilitation of those who have undergone an intervention.
This service was launched in early 2012, making the Hospital de Sant Joan de Déu the first in Spain that has a functional unit for dog interventions for pediatric patients.
Since then, he has served with good results a thousand children who were admitted or in the emergency room and 457 in the waiting rooms for external consultations. This hospital has many other resources to be "children's friend".
It is certainly important to create a hospital environment that not only considers clinical quality, but also takes into account the psychological, emotional, social and spiritual needs of patients and family members, and this dog service to help hospitalized children It is a good sample, a good job in this regard.
