RUFF Day Program Overview
Since the beginning of time, humans and animals have shared a powerful connection. In addition to providing companionship, our four-legged furry friends are still hard at work helping meet our needs in a different way. Among their many jobs, dogs provide assistance for the visually impaired and blind; they are used to detect drugs, accelerants and explosives; they play an important role in search and recovery efforts; and at Morristown Medical Center, they are providing a source of stress relief and bringing smiles to the hospital staff.
At Atlantic Health, our priority has always been the health of our patients. We also recognize the importance of the health of our staff. Thus, weschedule“RUFF Day” visits, a dedicated visit by a certified pet therapy team exclusively for our employees, to help with stress and team building. Most of these visits are in non-clinical areas where there are no regularly scheduled pet therapy visits. It brings our employees together to talk about the dog’s visit and enhance social interaction. These visits have an enormous healing effect on our staff, and they continually ask for more visits.Some of the places we visit are Corporate, Patient Access/Registration, Radiology waiting rooms, offices and medical records.
Most visits are scheduled monthly and/or quarterly, and on an as-needed basis as well. Visits last an hour on average. RUFFDay visits at corporate are scheduled for 2 hours as the team(s) are in a central location and employees come and visit as often as possible within that time period. We receive many requests from our Palliative Care/end of life healthcare providers to visit after their case review and staff meetings, as a way to help them address their own stress.
Here are some quotes from staff after a visit from a pet therapy team:
“The minute I would walk into the department with the pet therapy team, the faces of the staff would light up, their shoulders relax. As staff members take a moment to pet the dog, they are revitalized. The smiles on their faces are contagious. They engage with the owners of the dogs that come in and even have a collection of photos of the dogs that have visited posted in the department. While participating in these pet therapy visits for our ED patients, I realized that the staff loved it, too. Why not do this for all of our employees?”
“What a wonderful idea! As a nurse, I totally understand the benefit of this program. Spiritual and emotional needs of the staff are so important to address and these dogs are wonderful at providing unconditional love!”