This 3 page paper provides an overview of a proposal for a program that brings pets into a nursing home. Bibliography lists 4 sources.
Name of Research Paper File: MH11_MHNurHomPet.rtf
Unformatted Sample Text from the Research Paper:
home for nursing home or long-term medical care (Boltz, Hart and Rogers, 1993; Cookman, 1996). Further, researchers have been studying the impacts of nursing home pet visitation programs,
including the repeated presence of dogs and cats in nursing homes, for more than two decades (Hendy, 1987; Crowley-Robinson, Fenwick and Bradshaw, 1996). While these studies maintain the value
of the use of visiting pets in nursing homes in general, their application to specific scenarios in which pets are proposed to support the quality of life for the elderly
requires a closer scrutiny of the specifics of the nursing home environment. In order to determine whether this program should be funded,
it is necessary to determine whether the program is needed, both from a therapeutic standpoint and in increasing the quality of life for the patients. The following are some
questions that could be asked of residents to determine whether the program is needed: * Did you have a pet at the time you entered the nursing home?
If yes, how do you feel about the absence of that pet? * Do you feel that having pets in the nursing home would be positive or negative?
The following are research questions that could be asked of staff members regarding whether the program is needed: * Are there patients
under your care who have demonstrated negative impacts of being separated from family pets? * Are there patients under your care who you believe would benefit from the presence of
pets in the nursing home? The other consideration in developing the plan would be to determine whether it is feasible. One of the major considerations in determining the