Animal-Assisted Services 101, Part 1: The Patient Experience

By Whitney Romine, M.P.H., C-AAIS, KPA-CTP
Animal-Assisted Services Manager 
Mayo Clinic Rochester

Introduction

A horse in the lobby, a mobile fish tank making rounds, or a dog on your bed might sound unusual, until you reflect on how it made you feel about your hospital care. Did you smile when you told your family the story? Did you show your doctor or nurse the dog’s trading card, or pictures of the dog from your phone? These micro-moments illustrate the joy, connection, and psychological safety that are a hallmark of structured human-animal interactions, known as animal-assisted services, and how they transform healthcare experiences in remarkable ways.

What are Animal-Assisted Services?

Animal-Assisted Services describes the full spectrum of practices where qualified animals are included into therapeutic, educational, or supportive services to enhance human health outcomes and experience, while ensuring the welfare of participating animals.¹ This phrasing recognizes the intentional involvement of animals that have been trained, evaluated, and demonstrate willingness to participate in structured interventions guided by a credentialed professional or volunteer. Many hospitals know these programs as “pet therapy,” which is no longer the preferred term because these programs are typically delivered by volunteers outside of a therapeutic relationship, misrepresenting services provided as clinical practice.

What are the benefits and risks?

While early research has yielded promising results, including improvements in stress response, engagement and activity duration during inpatient stroke rehabilitation,² overall well-being and stress reduction,³ the quality of studies limits the implementation of animal-assisted interventions in a wide variety of settings and populations.⁴ We don’t yet understand how interactions with animals influence human health outcomes.

What we do understand, like any form of practice in healthcare, is that we must be mindful and responsible of how we introduce this into patient care. Healthcare leaders must be educated about human-animal interaction related injuries (accidental scratches, trip/slip hazards, bites) and zoonoses* (MRSA, C. diff) — diseases that can be transmitted between humans and animals — and methods to prevent or mitigate those risks. The good news is that most risk can be minimized with common, easy to implement practices most people are already doing, such as hand hygiene, animal handler education on infection prevention and animal body language, and routine animal health exams, vaccinations, and bathing.

(*More than 60% of known infectious diseases are zoonotic in origin, and approximately 75% of new diseases originate from wild or domestic animals.)⁵

What types of animal roles are involved in Animal-Assisted Services?

Animal-Assisted Services involve therapy or facility animals into health, education, or other related human services. Therapy and facility animals partner with a facility employee or volunteer to interact with the public and enhance a provided service. The difference between the two is the level of training: therapy animals are more like generalists while facility animals are more like specialists, the latter having advanced task training specific to therapeutic goals the handler implements into their practice.

Service and emotional support animals are focused on providing a service and/or support only to their owner/handler. The difference between them is that service animals perform a task, such as alerting their handler to noises by making physical contact, while emotional support animals provide comfort through presence alone.

It is important to be aware that service animals are granted public access rights under the Americans with Disabilities Act, meaning a service animal must be allowed to accompany the handler to any place where the public are allowed. Emotional support animals are not granted public access rights, but may be considered a reasonable accommodation in certain settings with documentation from a mental health provider.

Closing

Animal-Assisted Services is about thoughtful, intentional integration of qualified animals into the care experience, nurturing mutually beneficial relationships to promote hope and healing. Check out Part 2 of our Animal-Assisted Services blog series to see how these relationships translate into enhanced clinical outcomes and experience

References

1. Binder AJ, Parish-Plass N, Kirby M, et al. Recommendations for uniform terminology in animal-assisted services (AAS). Human-Animal Interactions. 2024; 12(1): 1-10. DOI: 10.1079/hai.2024.0003.
2. Shih HY, Martin F, Ness D, et al. The impact of animal-assisted treatment on inpatient stroke rehabilitation. Mayo Clinic Proceedings. 2026; 101(8):1332-1344. DOI: 10.1016/j.mayocp.2026.04.012.
3. Smidt JM, Clark SD, Cutshall M, et al. Effect of Animal-Assisted Activities on Wellbeing of Hospitalized Patients at a Tertiary Care Center: A Pilot Study. Prensa Med Argent. 2021;107(4):338. DOI: 10.47275/0032-745X-338.
4. Gee NR, Wells DL. Chapter 6: Examining the trajectory of human-animal interaction research: past, present, and future. In: Fine AH. Ed. Handbook on Animal-Assisted Therapy: Theoretical Foundations and Guidelines for Practice. 6^th Academic Press; 2025: 83-94
5. Sun ZS, Wan EY, Agbana YL, Zhao HQ, Yin JX, Jiang TG, Li Q, Fei SW, Wu LB, Li XC, Zhang QY, Liu JS, Gu SY, Guo ZY, Xue JB, Han LF, Zhang XX, Xia S, Welburn SC, Okpeku M, Guo XK, Wang ZJ, Chen JH, Zhang Y, Zhou XN, Kassegne K. Global One Health index for zoonoses: A performance assessment in 160 countries and territories. iScience. 2024 Mar 11;27(4):109297. doi: 10.1016/j.isci.2024.109297. PMID: 38715943; PMCID: PMC11074973.