Professor Paws Project: Service Dog Education for Allied Health Students

BACKGROUND: Service dogs provide specific tasks to their handlers, which increases owners’ independence and enhances their quality of life (Camp, 2001; Crowe et al., 2014; Gonder-Frederick, Rice, Warren, Vajda, & Shepard, 2013). However, service dogs are often misunderstood. The confusion leads to barriers and misunderstanding among service dog users in the community (Winkle, Crowe, & Hendrix, 2012). Currently, service dog education is not included in national curriculum standards for students in allied health degree programs, including occupational therapy. The paucity of service dog education among health care students and professionals leads to a gap in services, training, and advocacy for individuals with disabilities (Parenti, Foreman, Meade, & Wirth, 2013).

PURPOSE: The purpose of this study was to quantify the impact of interactive service dog education on allied health students’ understanding and perceptions of the use, benefits, ownership, and rights of service dog users. We hypothesized that interactive service dog education would significantly increase participants’ actual and perceived knowledge about service dog partnerships.

METHOD: We developed pre–post assessments designed to measure actual and perceived knowledge about the benefits, use, definitions, and laws pertaining to service dog partnerships. Sixty-two participants were recruited from the College of Allied Health student association. Participants completed a pretraining assessment. The students then participated in a 1-hr lecture about service dogs that included an interactive demonstration of a dog performing service dog skills. Students completed a posttraining assessment. A total of 50 participants had matched pre–post assessment scores. Five questions on the pre–post assessments were measured on a nominal scale (e.g., correct or incorrect). The McNemar nonparametric test was chosen for testing differences between related samples on a nominal scale. Responses on two pre–post assessment questions were assessed on a scale from 1 (no knowledge/not important) to 10 (very knowledgeable/very important). A paired-samples t test was used to test for a statistical difference between responses on these two pre–post assessment questions.

RESULTS: Test results indicate there were significant changes in participants’ understanding of what differentiates an assistance dog from a therapy dog, χ² = 9.09, p = .001. Participants also improved their scores in recognizing the types of service dogs, χ² = 7.58, p = .004, and understanding who would benefit from a service dog, χ² = 22.04, p = .0001. Overall, participants reported a significant increase in their perceived knowledge of service dogs. On a scale from one to 10, participants rated their pretraining knowledge of service dogs at 4.72, but the rating increased to 7.18, t(49) = 8.02, p < .001, following the training. Likewise, the perceived importance of knowing about service dogs for future health care providers significantly increased from 6.86 to 8.72, t(49) = 7.67, p < .001.

CONCLUSION: The 1-hr interactive service dog education proved to be effective in increasing allied health students’ knowledge and understanding about the use, benefits, ownership, and rights of service dog users. Additionally, the course impacted students’ perceptions about the importance of the knowledge for health care professionals. Allied health professionals’ role in patient care includes health education, support for recovery, patient advocacy, and promotion of daily function across the lifespan. The Professor Paws Project is a model for providing service dog education for health care students and professionals to increase the level or care and advocacy provided for clients. The research suggests adopting service dog education into national curriculum standards for occupational therapy.

References

Camp, M. (2001). The use of service dogs as an adaptive strategy: A qualitative study. American Journal of Occupational Therapy, 55, 509–517. https://doi.org/10.5014/ajot.55.5.509

Crowe, T., Perea-Burns, S., Sedillo, J., Hendrix, I., Winkle, M., & Deitz, J. (2014). Effects of partnerships between people with mobility challenges and service dogs. American Journal of Occupational Therapy, 68, 194–201. https://doi.org/10.5014/ajot.2014.009324

Gonder-Federick, L., Rice, P., Warren, D., Vajda, K., & Shepard, J. (2013). Diabetic alert dogs: A preliminary study of current users. Diabetes Care, 36, e47. https://doi.org/10.2337/dc12-1998

Parenti, L., Foreman, A., Meade, J., & Wirth, O. (2013). A revised taxonomy of assistance animals. Journal of Rehabilitation Research and Development, 50, 745–756. https://doi.org/10.1682/JRRD.2012.11.0216

Winkle, M., Crowe, T., & Hendrix, I. (2012). Service dogs and people with physical disabilities partnerships: A systematic review. Occupational Therapy International, 19, 54–66. https://doi.org/10.1002/oti.323