Service Animals—Reply

In Reply Drs Schwartz and Ambardekar provide a powerful, real-world example of how a creative and empathetic clinical team markedly improved care quality and safety for a girl with autism anxious about preprocedure anesthesia by involving her trusted service animal in appearing to “inject” the anesthetic induction medication. This innovative effort obviously took planning, collaboration with the girl’s parents, and perhaps relaxing institutional rules about allowing the service animal into a setting not customarily open to the public. But the first step was for the clinical team to even think of this solution—to see the girl’s service animal as a potential partner in caring for their young patient. Others can learn from this example of true person-centered care.