Dogs on call

Many hospitals have pet therapy programs. At VCU, the Dogs on Call Program is a part of the Center for Human-Animal Interaction, which conducts research on the therapeutic effects of interacting with animals. Click here to view a video about the program.

Now I'm sure that these programs make some of us in Infection Prevention nervous. But as I have argued many times before, an infection-free hospital stay may not be the be-all and end-all for every patient. Sometimes infection prevention is trumped by other facets of patient care. And this, I think, is one of them.
 

Pet therapy & human pathogens: Bad combo

A study by Dr. Scott Weese, a specialist in veterinary nosocomial infections at the Ontario Veterinary College, evaluated 26 pet therapy dogs to determine whether contamination with human pathogens occurs when the animals are brought to healthcare facilities. He found that two of the dogs became contaminated--one dog had contamation of the paws with C. difficile and the other had contamination of the fur with MRSA. This raises the question of whether the dogs should be bathed after contact with patients in healthcare facilities.