Stones Crossing Physical Therapy and Rehab offers clients a variety of treatments and therapists have multiple advanced training and certifications in different skills. Staff wanted an animal assisted therapy (AAT) program to give clients an alternative therapy method but had limited time and resources. Therefore, a doctorate capstone experience (DCE) student was brought in at the site to develop the AAT program. The purpose of this DCE is to create an AAT program to support and/or enhance therapy interventions which will ultimately increase the QOL in an outpatient pediatric population. A needs assessment survey was created by the DCE student in order to determine if staff thought there was a need for an AAT program and what they thought potential benefits and barriers of the program would be. Based on research findings and findings from the needs assessment survey, the student developed a program proposal, policies and procedures, and found an AAT organization that best fit the site. Additionally, the student created a resource packet that included textbooks, links to the Animal Assisted Therapy International Standards of Practice and glossary terms for AAT, and citations/abstracts for intervention research articles. An inservice was presented to staff and staff completed a pre and post survey to measure their understanding of AAT after attending the presentation and reviewing the resources. Average scores on the post survey for each question increased from the pre survey. It is recommended that staff use these resources when the AAT program is implemented to ensure best practice.

Creator

• Kessens, Alexandria

Contributors

• Fogo, Jennifer

Publisher

• University of Indianapolis

Language

• en

Identifier

• Kessens, A OTD 2018 (i.e. Bednarski, J OTD 2018) (1).pdf

Keyword

• Health Sciences

• Occupational Therapy

Date created

• 2018-08

Rights statement

• http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/