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From In-Person To Virtual: A Case Study Of An Animal-Assisted Visiting Program In A Pediatric Setting, Whitney Romine

People and Animals: The International Journal of Research and Practice

This article focuses on the practical aspects of converting a successful in-person AAA program to a virtual program in a health care setting including human, canine, and physical resources; animal welfare considerations; training, infection control, and safety guidelines; and visit delivery procedures. In 1992, an interdisciplinary team at Akron Children’s Hospital founded the Doggie Brigade, an animal-assisted activities (AAA) program where volunteer therapy dogs and their handlers visit pediatric patients. The program has become a cornerstone of the hospital’s culture over its now 30-year tenure. In March 2020, the announcement of the COVID-19 pandemic forced health care organizations to suspend …

Working Out The Kinks: Creating Solutions To Assist Health Care Workers To Take Vital Signs Through Effective Cable Management, Carl R. Russell Iii, Emily J. Linder, Maya A. Godbole

Purdue Journal of Service-Learning and International Engagement

EPICS (Engineering Projects in Community Service) is a service-learning design program run through Purdue University. It strives to teach students design skills through providing solutions for individuals, communities, and organizations in the surrounding area while mirroring engineering industry standards. BME (Bio-medical Engineering) is a team within EPICS that strives to serve community partners through biomedical applications. Members of a health care team often spend valuable time organizing cables associated with machines used to take patients’ vital signs. Due to time constraints and the fast-paced work environment, these cables may be mismanaged and damaged. The BME team is working on a …

Animal-Assisted Interventions In Health Care Settings: A Best Practices Manual For Establishing New Programs: Volunteer Manual Template, Sandra B. Barker, Rebecca A. Vokes, Randolph T. Barker

AAI

This document accompanies Animal-Assisted Interventions in Health Care Settings: A Best Practices Manual for Establishing New Programs (Purdue Press, 2019) and serves as a template for readers to personalize for their facility. The generic terms “ABC Health Care Facility” and “AAI Program” are intended to be replaced by the names of the reader's facility and AAI program.

The book can be purchased from Purdue University Press.

Animal-Assisted Interventions In Health Care Settings: A Best Practices Manual For Establishing New Programs, Sandra B. Barker, Rebecca A. Vokes, Randolph T. Barker

Purdue University Press Book Previews

Growing literature around the benefits of animal-assisted intervention (AAI) spurs health care professionals and administrators to start new programs. Yet the trend also raises questions of how best to begin and run successful AAI programs—under what circumstances, with what staff, and within what guidelines.

Animal-Assisted Interventions in Health Care Settings: A Best Practices Manual for Establishing New Programs succinctly outlines how best to develop, implement, run, and evaluate AAI programs. Drawing on extensive professional experiences and research from more than fifteen years leading the Center for Human-Animal Interaction in the Virginia Commonwealth University School of Medicine, the authors discuss both …

Leveraging Technology: Enhancing Study Time Through Competition, Ming Yang, Lindsey Eble, Patricia Darbishire

Purdue Journal of Service-Learning and International Engagement

Ming (Max) Yang and Lindsey Eble are students in their final year of the Doctor of Pharmacy program in the Purdue University College of Pharmacy. Max is originally from Chesterfield, Missouri, and Lindsey is from Newburgh, Indiana. After graduation in May 2018, Max will complete residency training at Aurora St. Luke’s Medical Center in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Lindsey will complete residency training at Barnes-Jewish Hospital in St. Louis, Missouri. Both plan to work in a hospital or clinic setting providing patient care within an interdisciplinary healthcare team. They both worked under the guidance of Dr. Patricia Darbishire to develop a website …

Developing A Mobile Application: Improving Health Care Students’ Ability To Communicate, Kiersten Walters, Ilya Rybakov, Patricia L. Darbishire

Purdue Journal of Service-Learning and International Engagement

The purpose of this project was to develop, pilot, assess, and describe a new interdisciplinary, game-based phone application. The application is intended to help health care students better communicate medication and medical terminology to their patients and to other health care providers and insurance companies. This IRB-approved project called “PharmPhrase” was developed using an application-development software program. The pilot involved multiple groups of competing teams composed of volunteer pharmacy students in their first professional years who were randomly assigned into teams of three to five. The PharmPhrase user explains a randomly generated medical term to team members based on assumptions …

Building Healthy Futures: Two Students’ Experiences With Global Health In Rural Ecuador, Varsha Kumar, Daniel Shyu

Purdue Journal of Service-Learning and International Engagement

This article highlights two students’ experience on Timmy Global Health’s medical brigade to Quito, Ecuador. Timmy is a nonprofit, Indiana-based organization dedicated to advocacy, service, and fundraising on a domestic and global scale. Every year, Timmy sends a group of sixteen students and medical professionals to Quito, Ecuador, over Purdue’s spring break to treat people in underserved communities who otherwise would not have access to quality health care. On this medical brigade, Timmy students travel to a different location each day for a week, set up clinic, and diagnose, treating nearly 100 patients a day. Those with conditions too complex …

Modeling The Performance Improvement Process: A Case Study Of A Federally Qualified Health Center, Emily Bond

The Journal of Purdue Undergraduate Research

The city of Gary, Indiana, has experienced an economic downturn in recent years that has led to an unemployment rate that is 2.5 times higher than the national average. In addition, Lake County, which includes the city of Gary, is currently one of the two unhealthiest counties in the state of Indiana. Documented poor health behaviors in this area highlight the need to change how at-risk communities access health care. Community HealthNet (CHN) is a federally funded clinic with five locations in Lake County and a vision to provide accessible, affordable, and quality medical services. Since 1998, CHN has made …

A Case Study Conducted With Nurses: Insight Into The Implementation Of Lean Principles And Techniques In A Medical Setting, Kyasha Edmond, Cameron Brown, Vinchessica Gray, Nakia Taylor

The Journal of Purdue Undergraduate Research

The implementation of lean methods in a health care setting is difficult when nurses are inadequately informed about lean techniques, principles, and the intent of these when applied in health care. To aid in communication amongst health care officials and ease of workplace transformation, there is a need for a supplemental lean education program that is tailored to the needs of nurses. The high-level objective of this research project is to identify and eliminate waste in health care facilities to ultimately save the facility (public-, private-, or government-owned) money without compromising customer satisfaction. The ultimate goal of this project is …

Hospital System Readmissions: A Care Cycle Approach, Cody Mullen

The Journal of Purdue Undergraduate Research

Hospital readmission rates can be used as an indicator of the quality of health care services and can highlight high-priority research areas to ensure better health. A readmission is defined as when a patient is discharged from an acute care hospital and is admitted back to an acute care hospital in a set amount of days, with 30 days being the current national standard. On average, 19.6% of Medicare patients are readmitted to the hospital within 30 days of discharge and 56.1% within a year (Jencks, Williams, & Coleman, 2009). The hypothesis of this study was that the discharge location, …

Health Care Cost Containment: Action Alternatives, Edna E. Loose, Martin T. Pond

Historical Documents of the Purdue Cooperative Extension Service

No abstract provided.