BURSTA team of dogs are making waves in the B.C. healthcare sector.
Five specially trained canines put in a shift at Kelowna General Hospital (KGH) on Tuesday, June 2, to help mitigate disease in the healthcare centre.
“We’re doing a tour of the Interior,” said Lale Aksu, assistant manager at the Canines 4 Care program operating out of Vancouver Coastal Health (VCH). “We are going from Penticton, Kelowna, Grand Forks, all the way out to Cranbrook, and then Trail and Nelson, then Kamloops, and then back home.”
The team was in Kelowna last fall, but upon special request, they returned to put their keen-snouts to good use.
Dogs in the Canines 4 Care program are trained through a rigorous program since a young-age in order to train them to be able to detect a bacteria called Clostridioides difficile (C. difficile).
C. difficile is the most common cause of acute diarrhea in North American hospitals, according to VCH, who added that more than 60 per cent of cases involving the bacteria are contracted in healthcare facilities.
“We usually find (C. difficile) in the hallways. Our dogs are trained to find it in the hallways,” Aksu said, adding that using dogs to snuff out the disease is often faster than swab testing for it.
“The dog can screen a unit in about 15 minutes if it’s an average sized unit. And if we would go around and swab everything, we would swab that particular object, bring it back to the laboratory, grow it for two weeks to see if something is on there. So really we have a two week delay. Now the dog can tell us within 15 minutes.”
Megan Helgason, director of clinical operations for KGH, said the canine team is able to cover a significant amount of the hospital in a single day on site.
“They’re such an effective tool,” Helgason said.
When asked if KGH would consider a permanent canine team at the hospital, Helgason said there are no plans in place but added that the dogs would be welcome to come back anytime.
On Tuesday, Aksu showed off Kip, a young cocker spaniel who has been working in hospitals for nearly a year. Kip has been training to do this work since he was eight-weeks old and became certified at around two-years old.
“In order to do this job, (the dogs) have to show us their proficiency, their sensitivity and specificity,” she said. “And then we get tested as a team as well, how well we gel with the dog, and then we’re allowed to work.”
Aksu said the team is mainly made up of spaniels who were chosen due to their strong hunting instincts.
“We prefer our spaniels because, A: People love them. They have their fluffy ears, they’re sociable with people and they’re pretty sturdy in the environment as well,” she said.
“Then also on the other hand, they’re excellent searchers. We have our dogs all come from a hunting breeding kennel out in Utah and Vancouver Island where our dogs were bred just for the purpose of hunting so their search urge is preserved.”