Therapy Dogs Visit UTSW - Clements Hospital
Last Friday, May 1, Roz and Rusty, Starr and Emma, and Daisy and I had the opportunity to visit with the staff at UTSW - Clements Hospital. Needless to say, this was an extremely controlled visit; every dog was bathed within 24 hours of the visit, every human was wearing a mask, the dogs were spaced at opposite ends of 6 ft tables, every team was issued a bottle of hand sanitizer and every person was required to use the hand sanitizer before and after touching the dog. Each volunteer and employee had our temperature taken before interacting. Authorized by the hospital, I bought chlorohexidine dog wipes and we used them after every 5-10 people had interacted.
You can see from the photo that we were set up in the breezeway between the staff parking garage and the employee entrance. You can also see that they had 6 ft tape lines on the walk, mostly for their morning "crowd control" but it worked for our purposes as well. We had 30 mph wind that day; I joked that we had our own "negative air pressure" space for the visit.
We were there from 1-3pm and their shift changes at 2pm. We had about 100-120 employees visit with us. They had a photographer there who took both social pictures and photos of every employee's ID if contact tracing becomes necessary.
UTSW may invite us back to do additional staff-only visits at their hospitals. UTSW- approved volunteers, please let me know if you are interested in participating in these visits!
Sheryll