“We’re very grateful to the foundation that contributed the remaining funds so we could purchase the seal. We are very passionate about it because it is an incredible piece of technology that brings connection, comfort and joy. In the short time we have been implementing Seal Therapy, it has had the most amazing impact on patients within the neurosurgery/neurology and Stroke wards,” – Amanda Masters, Director of Social Work
Recently purchased for PA’s ACUTE surgical team through donations to PA Research Foundation’s (PARF) Giving Day and the aid of PARF, this new therapeutic tool, known as PARO – the therapeutic Robot companion, has become an important item of care to the team and the patients they help. This wasn’t just a random idea that landed in the ward one day. The introduction of the seal started by identifying the loneliness, disconnection, and overwhelming feelings that patients and their families can experience when they are in the PA Hospital for an extended period. Through researching solutions, a team member recalled her social work placement at Brighton Brain Injury Unit. Where she’d witnessed the difference it made for patients who had dementia or complex neurological conditions.
As a result, advanced social worker Amy Wilson began researching the positive effects, and a systematic literature review by Hung et al (2019) compared 29 papers on PARO and found three main benefits to using the robotic seal: reducing negative emotion and behavioural symptoms, improving social engagement, and promoting positive mood and quality of care experience. Therefore, the team was excited to explore its potential for patients with complex brain and neurological conditions whose hospital stays stretch into the many months.
Why a seal?
Yup, it’s not a cat or a dog, and there’s a reason why. While many people have complicated or even fearful past experiences with pets, almost no one has had a bad experience with a baby seal. Thanks to its design and advanced sensors, it blinks, moves, responds to touch, even creates gentle sounds, and responds to its name and those who regularly work with it. The seal is fluffy and soft, with a comfortable weight for patients to hold, stroke or hug.
Introducing it to patients and families:
Introducing something new in a hospital setting, especially something as unusual as a robotic seal, comes with its own challenges. Some staff, patients and their family members were understandably hesitant at first. Asking questions like, would it feel childish? Would patients even respond? Was it hygienic?
The team handled these concerns with care and education. Though encouraging patients and families to keep an open mind was the best advice, infection control protocols were carefully followed, including cleaning before and after each use, hand sanitizer for everyone involved and protective towels during sessions. Most importantly, gaining consent from patients or from families when patients are too unwell to provide to provide informed consent.
It's more than a tool – it’s a connection
It may just seem like a robotic seal, but it is much more than that.
One of the very first patients to use the seal was a women in her 40s, with a life limiting diagnosis, where she was very unwell, and spent much of the time sleeping. When she was offered time with the seal, she opened her eyes and gave a big thumbs up. The next day, she and her mother would spend a full hour with the seal, putting a smile on their faces, and creating what would sadly be their one of their final moments together. She passed the following day and her mother was deeply grateful to have shared that peaceful memory.
Another patient, a young woman who had a stroke, had no family visiting at the time and was deeply emotional and overwhelmed due to having a stroke at a young age and what this would mean for her future. A social worker offered the seal simply as something to hold. She ended up cradling it for hours, reducing her self-reported sense of overwhelm and anxiety. That same day, it was passed to another patient across the hall with dementia to help soothe them, which in turn helped nursing perform their role as the patient was calm and settled.
Another patient with a long-term brain injury now uses the Seal during rehab. His mum joins the sessions, using it as a way to engage in hand movements and visual tracking. It also helps children who visit their patients who are very unwell and unable to interact with them as they used to.
Staff are even feeling the impact, as the seal has been used during a difficult debrief following a sudden patient death, the Seal was passed around to staff, which provided a sense of calm and connection during the debrief.
The Seal helps create a more comforting and emotionally supportive environment within the hospital, which can often feel overwhelming, unfamiliar, or even traumatic for patients and their families.
Why it matters:
This initiative is led by a passionate social work team, who has brought forward a solution to bring a moment of peace within an overwhelming environment. It’s still in its early stages, with only seven across Queensland Health. But even in just three months, the outcome speaks volumes. Whether used to calm anxiety, help a child visit their critically ill parents, or give a family a moment of shared affection, the seal is doing what medicine alone sometimes cannot: providing people with comfort.
