ATLANTA – Going to the hospital may cause anxiousness for lots of people, and it may be particularly nerve-wracking for teenagers.
That is why Youngsters’s Healthcare of Atlanta launched its Canine for Children program.
This system is increasing in order that sufferers can keep linked to their favourite service canine even after they’re not round by means of a Pen Paws program.
Reggie is one in every of greater than a dozen within the furry fleet of educated service pups which can be thought of full-time workers at Youngsters’s Healthcare of Atlanta. They even have their very own badges.
For the previous 13 years, Reggie and his fellow pups have made quick associates and supplied consolation to lots of of sufferers at CHOA.
Youngsters’s began this system again in 2009 to assist sufferers cope, heal, and obtain remedy targets whereas on the hospital.
“No matter they’re doing as a part of their jobs – the canine are doing alongside of them,” Canines for Children Senior Coordinator Kara Klein mentioned. “Their position is to assist a affected person by means of a process or in the event that they’re having a take a look at performed or an MRI to point out them what that is perhaps like through the use of one in every of our facility canine. We have had our canine experience a CT scanner earlier than to point out our sufferers, hey if Reggie can do it, you are able to do it too.”
Klein says the first-of-its-kind program is prospering.
Actually, it is a part of the explanation an extension of this system launched a couple of month in the past.
“As a result of our canine develop into such a essential a part of a hospital keep, typically occasions a affected person asks to search for one in every of our canine or see one in every of our canine, however there are occasions when our canine simply won’t be accessible,” she mentioned.
That is how the straightforward concept of turning into pen friends with a affected person’s favourite facility pup was born.
The Pen Paws program permits dad and mom to alternate letters and playing cards of assist with their furry caregivers in occasions when they might not have the ability to see their favourite facility canine.
Klein says it may well additionally inspire sufferers to take part in duties like bodily and occupational remedy.
“In case your objective is to have your affected person stroll, here’s a means to do that – have your affected person stroll and ship the letter all the way down to the mailbox,” she says. “Or if a affected person is engaged on writing abilities after they’ve had trauma to that aspect of their physique – what in the event that they wrote a letter to Reggie, Aston, or Lotus or one in every of our canine and dropped that letter within the mailbox?”
It is one other avenue to assist sufferers, their households, and even hospital workers throughout a few of life’s most nerve-racking moments.
“When a canine walks right into a room – you see an enormous smile on a affected person’s face. We have heard from so many dad and mom that say ‘I have never seen my baby smile in weeks. That is the primary time I’ve seen my baby smile when this canine walks into that room'” Klein says.
As a result of Canines for Children is so profitable, they’ve a objective of including two canine to the hospital workers yearly.
This system is funded solely from donations.
If you would like to assist Canines for Children, you possibly can study extra on the program’s web page on Youngsters’s Healthcare of Atlanta web site.
