Effectiveness of a Dog-Assisted Therapy Program to Enhance Quality of Life in Institutionalized Dementia Patients

María à ngeles Briones, Isabel Pardo-García and Francisco Escribano-Sotos
Authors registered in the RePEc Author Service: Francisco Escribano Sotos ()

Clinical Nursing Research, 2021, vol. 30, issue 1, 89-97

Abstract: The aim of this study was to assess the effectiveness of a dog-assisted therapy intervention to enhance quality of life in persons with dementia institutionalized in a public care home and to study its effect on the use of psychotropic medications. A dog-assisted therapy intervention was designed, in which 34 residents of a public care home in Cuenca (Spain) participated. The participants were assigned to two groups, an experimental and a control group. The program consisted of one 50-min session per week during 9 months. Analysis of covariance (ANCOVA) was used to compare post-training values between groups, using baseline values as covariates. Our findings do seem to support the hypothesis that Animal-Assisted Therapy may contribute to enhancing quality of life for residents in an aged care home. However, aspects such as the format, time, and content of the sessions as well as their possibilities of reducing psychotropic medication require more research.

Keywords: dog-assisted therapy; quality of life; dementia; institutionalization; nursing care (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1054773819867250 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:clnure:v:30:y:2021:i:1:p:89-97

DOI: 10.1177/1054773819867250

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Clinical Nursing Research
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().