Animal Companions, ICU Ventilator Procedures Interest New Jamail Professor

Mara Baun discovered early in her nursing career that following established procedures wasn't always best for her or her patient.

When an ICU patient's lungs needed suctioning because of a buildup of secretions, she followed the protocol, yet the patient suddenly stopped breathing. "We had to do a resuscitation, which was successful," recalls Baun, a Lee and Joseph D. Jamail Distinguished Professor in The University of Texas-Houston School of Nursing. Her appointment is in the department of acute and continuing care.

"I wondered, `What happened here? I did exactly the protocol that I was supposed to do.'" Eventually, Baun discovered that patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease depend on low oxygen to make them breathe. So, giving the patient 100 percent oxygen had ceased his need to breathe.

She started reviewing the literature and decided to use this as a topic for her doctoral research. Since then, she's conducted quite a few studies in the area of oxygenation and hyperinflation before and after endotracheal suctioning. The studies have been funded by a variety of sources, including the National Institutes of Health. Baun came to UT-Houston, Jan. 1, from the College of Nursing at the University of Nebraska Medical Center, where she had been associate dean for research since 1981.

While her work in endotracheal suctioning is of great importance in critical care, her research into the healthful effects of having a companion animal has received a great deal of interest, especially from the popular press.

Baun's work in that area began in the 1980s when she heard of a study reporting that petting an animal could have a beneficial effect on a person's blood pressure.

"I had gone home one night," she says, "after having had a horrible day and was sitting with my dogs. It dawned on me that I didn't think my blood pressure would go down unless it was my dogs I was petting." She set up a controlled study to look at the difference between a person with normal blood pressure petting a dog to whom he or she was attached, as opposed to petting a "real sweet" dog that was unknown to the study subject. The participants' blood pressure went down when they petted their own dog, but not when they petted the "unknown" canine. Since then, she's studied the use of companion animals with a variety of subjects - from young children to the institutionalized elderly; from people with normal health to those with hypertension and those with Alzheimer's. She's looked at a variety of outcomes - physiological variables such as blood pressure, heart rate and finger temperature and psychosocial variables including social interaction, agitation and behavioral distress. "In all of the studies," says Baun, "the presence of animals has had a positive effect on humans."

- PAM LEWIS

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