Therapy dogs could help keep children calm in the emergency department

Embargoed until: Publicly released: 2025-03-15 02:00

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Therapy dogs can help children who are hospitalised feel less anxious in the emergency department, according to international research. Hospitals already use a variety of tools to try and reduce the anxiety children feel in the emergency department, and the researchers looked at whether hanging out with a trained therapy dog for about 10 minutes could help alongside these well-established tools. 80 children of an average age of 11 participated in the study, with half given the usual care to help keep them calm, while the other half received that same care as well as time with a therapy dog. The child was asked to rate their anxiety at multiple points during their time in hospital, their caregiver was also asked to rate how anxious they believed their child was and the child's saliva was tested at different points for stress hormone levels. The researchers say there was a modest reduction in both child and parent-reported anxiety for the children who had access to the therapy dogs, suggesting this could be another way to help keep children calm in a stressful and sometimes traumatic situation.