Ascension Sacred Heart Pensacola’s new facility dog, Joy, has been on duty for a couple of months now. The golden retriever is the newest member of the Sacred Paws Team that works alongside hospital staff to comfort patients and their families when they’re most in need.
Joy spends a lot of time in Sacred Heart’s Emergency Room and Level 1 Trauma Center —the only trauma center in the region with the top-level designation. She’s specifically assigned to comfort adult patients and their families experiencing traumatic injuries.
“I usually take her into the trauma rooms,” said ER nurse Caitlin Broscious, who’s one of Joy’s handlers. “I work a lot of the traumas, so after the patients are ‘resuscitated,’ meaning their stable and we’ve done everything for them, I will usually come in with her afterward, kind of for family support, because we do take care of the pediatric traumas in her as well.”
Broscious says it’s common for Joy to comfort patients and families following the trauma of car wrecks and other accidents.
“But the minute she goes in a room, it’s like a light switch flips on and she goes in and she goes to work,” said Broscious, noting that even staff are impressed with Joy. “She walks in, she knows she’s at work, she gets in the bed with the patient; she knows what she’s supposed to do. She knows she works in an ER, and she knows that they are traumatic injuries. It’s amazing how intelligent she is.”
On this day, Broscious and the staff determined that patient Reginald Evans, referred to as Mr. Reggie, is a good candidate for a visit.
“Come on up here,” said Evans, summoning the two-year-old dog to jump on his bed. “Jack would love her.”
As is common during visits, the golden retriever reminds Evans of the love he gets from his own dog adopted from a shelter in 2022, after he was diagnosed with colon cancer.
“He was basically all I had, really. He was there for me. And he knows when I’m not feeling well, when I’m not feeling good. I mean the dog is so sensitive,” Evans recalled. “There’s an old saying, ‘A dog is a man’s best friend.’ It’s true.”
This experience with Joy is a first for Evans, who said he hoped to see her again before he’s released due to the level of comfort she’s brought him.
“My anxiety levels have dropped drastically because of this dog,” he said. “Although I had taken the (pain killer) Dilaudid, she has made it a lot better.”
After the stop in Evans’ room, it’s time to find another patient to visit. Every few feet along the way, Joy gets some love from passing staff members.
“Hey pumpkin,” said one staffer, who stopped briefly to pet Joy on the way by.
“She lives with me; I’m here primary handler,” said Donna Holland, director of emergency services. “I bring her to work with me every day. I take her home with me every day.”
Joy is one of seven facility or therapy dogs, along with two siblings, that make up the Sacred Paws Team. Holland says the animals are funded through donors to the Sacred Heart Foundation and they all come from Canine Assistants in Alpharetta, Georgia, which trains service dogs. The team of handlers from Sacred Heart was among numerous hospital groups that traveled to Georgia to attend a camp and meet their new facility dog for the first time.
“You don’t know which one is yours, but immediately, when they let her out of the kennel to come to us, she ran straight to us and rolled over for us to rub her belly and all that stuff,” Holland said.
She pointed out that training at the camp is extensive and needs to be.
“Because she’s a hospital facility dog, we go through training of when you are allowed to get on a bed and what the signal is for her to jump on the bed with the patient,” she explained. “We learn to walk with them if a patient is using a walker or wheelchair, all the things you would see inside a hospital. They get the sights and sounds of a hospital, they use stretchers or hospital beds and we practice those skills while we’re there.”
Since arriving in Pensacola and getting to work in late November, Joy has been welcomed in every part of the hospital.
“We go to ICUs. We go to waiting rooms for surgery. We will visit anyone,” Holland said. “We participate in so many things throughout the day, because in a hospital, it’s ever changing. It could be a trauma coming in that we go and help with the family while we’re taking care of the patient, or it could be that the patient is ready for a visit from Joy to provide them a little comfort.”
Joy also makes visits to patients and families in Studer Children’s Hospital and will visit staff to help them decompress during stressful situations. Holland says people almost always light up when their new facility dog enters a room.
“It’s a complete 360 sometimes,” she said. “Because as we all know being in the hospital is not where you want to be and to have a little bit of that stress relief that they bring when they come in the room and just what they bring when they put their paws on their bed, immediately the patient is like, ‘Oh my gosh, she’s so beautiful. You know, ‘Look at her paws. Look at how soft she is.’”
This is exactly what happens when a female patient in their observation unit meets Joy and gushes.
“Good girl. Good baby. She is beautiful. She’s very beautiful. It’s wonderful.”
According to Holland, such visits provide people with a welcome distraction from the realities of why they’re in the hospital.
