Attitude Survey of Nursing Personnel Working at Hospitals Twoard Animal Assisted Intervention: Focus on a Psychiatric Hospital Planning to Introduce Animals / 日本農村医学会雑誌

ABSTRACT

As the spiritually enriching effects of spending time together with animals are gaining the recognition from the public in Japan, an increasing number of inpatients wish to see or to live with companion animals. This situation is spurring on the spread of patient-animal interactions at hospitals. In the present study, an attitude survey was conducted to find out whether nurses are found of animals and whether they are in favor of the use of companion animals at hospitals. The sample was nursing personnel working at a psychiatric hospital that was planning to introduce patient-animal interactions as an intervention strategy to realize nursing support and improve the quality of life of inpatients. The results showed that most respondents had no experience with animal-assisted activities or therapy. However, they expected that seeing and living with companion animals would exert some degree of positive effects on inpatients. Thus, the “preferences, thoughts, and experiences regarding animals” of nurses led to “the understanding toward implementation of animal-assisted srevices at hospitals”. When introducing companion animals in the treatment and care of patients, it is important for nursing personnel to be interested in and like animals, and to realize the need for patient-animal interactions in daily life.