This episode of PEDA cast is brought to you by the Butterfly Paws program at Nationwide Children's Hospital. Hello, everybody, and welcome once again to PDACast.

It is a pediatric podcast for moms and dads.

This is Dr. Mike, coming to you from nationwide at Children's Hospital.

We're in Columbus, Ohio.

It's episode 565.

We're calling this one Butterfly Paws, Facility and Therapy Dogs for Kids. I want to welcome all of you to the program.

So you might not initially expect to see a dog when you visit a children's hospital, especially if you do not attend children's hospitals very often.

But facility and therapy dogs actually have an important role in pediatric health care.

Of course, these are special dogs with gentle temperaments and lots of training,

and they are accompanied by handlers who are sensitive to the medical needs of children.

These friendly canines offer a healing touch and supportive interactions when young patients need them most.

So today we're going to explore the butterfly paws program, which provides facility and therapy dogs at our hospital.

But what exactly is a facility dog and how do they differ from therapy dogs?

How are these animals selected and trained? And what exactly is their

role or roles within the hospital? Well, stick around because we will have answers to these

questions and more as we explore the butterfly paws program at nationwide children's hospital.

Of course, in our usual p-dicast fashion, we have several terrific guests to share their thoughts and experience with us.

Melissa McMillan is the program manager of Butterfly Paws.

Rochelle Krause is one of our dog handlers,

both of them from Nationwide Children's Hospital.

And Dr. Lisa Humphrey is with palliative care also at Nationwide Children's.

Before we get to them, I do want to remind you the information presented in PDACAST is for general educational purposes only.

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