Pet care is one of the main reasons that sick people hesitate to be admitted to the hospital, doctors have found.
To research the issue, Michigan Medicine contacted a network that it maintains of about 1,300 patients and family members, HealthDay News reports.
From among 113 responses, 63 percent reported that they’d “experienced difficulty when figuring out pet care during their own hospitalizations or the hospitalizations of a loved one.” And 16 percent knew someone who’d checked out of the hospital against physicians’ advice in order to look after pets.
The research came about after Dr. Tiffany Braley, a clinical neuroimmunologist at University of Michigan Health/Michigan Medicine, observed that some patients sought to avoid staying in the hospital. Despite being seriously ill, they wanted to go home to care for their pets.
Colleagues in nursing and social work “confirmed that, in general, hospital systems really don’t have formalized plans in place to assess pet care needs or to help provide assistance with pet care for patients who are in a hospital.”
Her organization is in early talks with the Michigan Humane Society about partnering to offer foster care for such pets.
Read more at HealthDay News.