Will Animal Assisted Therapy Result in Shorter Length of Stay for Hospitalized Patients and Improve Basic Needs Status and Physical Outcomes Such as Blood Pressure, Heart Rate, and Pain?

Animal Assisted Therapy (AAT) has been thought to have a therapeutic effect upon humans, especially those individuals who are confined due to age or illness. Human-animal contact encourages socialization for the lonely; it promotes movement in the relatively immobile, and may serve as a memory prompt for the elderly and just plain talking for nearly everyone. The purposes of this research study was to assess if AAT would result in shorter length of stay for hospitalized patients and improve basic need status and physical outcomes such as blood pressure, heart rate, pain. The Basic Need Satisfaction Inventory Tool (BNSI) created by Nancy Klein Leidy, PhD (Leidy, 1994) using Maslow’s Theory provided the theoretical framework for this study. Maslow’s theory contends that as humans meet basic needs, they seek to satisfy successively higher needs that occupy a hierarchy. Dr. Leidy created a twenty- seven item questionnaire using a Likert scale. This tool was divided into five subscales each addressing physical needs, safety, belonging, self-esteem and self-actualization needs (Leidy, 1994). The non-random sample in this study consisted of forty-five patients (n=30 experimental group and n=15 control group), seeking medical care in a community hospital for recently diagnosed cancer. Participants completed two pencil and paper questionnaires, consent for study and release of responsibility waiver to the hospital. Data analyses included descriptive statistics and independent-sample t-tests. Patients in the experimental group showed significantly better results (p