Backround: Hospitalization, for whatever reason, is always an important interference with the quality of life of an individual, and although it is a purely somatic disease, we always have to pay attention to the personality of the person. Developing a certain degree of change in emotional states (depression, anxiety) is a logical response to perceived pain and other factors, especially during long-term hospitalization. The patient's overall biopsychosocial well-being is an important aspect of the treatment and the entire team must be involved. One of the options for positively influencing the health of patients can be the addition of Animal-Assisted Therapy (AAT) which, if the client has a positive relationship to the animals, can positively affect his mood and affect his pulse and pressure.
Methods: The aim of our study was to find out whether the presence of a dog in a hospital can positively affect the heartbeat and pressure in long-term care patients and whether the mood will be affected. The research was conducted at the Central Military Hospital at the Long Term Care Department. The dog handler went to each patient (n=25) for two months, once a week, and the therapy lasted for 40 minutes. In addition to standard care, an AAT was also performed in the presence of a dog. The dog was Border Colie Mia, 5 years old female, and all welfare conditions of dog were respected. Project was approve by Ethical Commitee of Central Military Hospital. and by the Commitee of Czech University of Life Sciences. Standard rehabilitation treatment was performed in the experimental group. The patient status was observed the day before the therapy, on the day of therapy and the next day for 8 weeks. The observed parameters were pulse, pressure and also subjective evaluation using the Likert scale.
Results: Based on the results obtained, there was no statistically significant improvement at pulse and pressure. What is important, however, is that patients are subjectively assessing their condition as improving. Patients in the control group also evaluate their condition as improving, but not as many as the patients in the AAT
Conclusion: Although AAT did not influence the improvement of patient's pulse and pressure, subjectively, patients assessed their health as significantly better than in the control group. It is possible to use AAT to improve patients' mental wellbeing and improve their collaboration with other workers such as physiotherapists, ergotherapists, logopedists and others.