Service animals in clinical education: A call to action for nursing student inclusion

Healthy People 2030 calls for schools, workplaces, and other settings to be more accessible to individuals with disabilities, thereby enhancing their overall well-being and quality of life. Yet current academic and clinical policies and guidelines are often inconsistent, with gaps or direct conflicts that act as barriers to participation in class and clinical, impacting student outcomes. Nursing students with disabilities, especially those who use service dogs, often encounter barriers in academic and clinical settings. They are a unique, often overlooked subgroup of nursing students. The overall purpose of this contemporary issues paper is to inform guidance for inclusive policies for nursing students with disabilities, especially those who use service animals, with recommendations for promoting and facilitating accessibility in nursing education and practice while maintaining patient safety, infection prevention, and control, and optimal learning experiences. We examine barriers to access for students with service dogs and opportunities to accommodate them in academic and clinical settings. Guided by Healthy People 2030, we identify critical gaps in policies and guidelines in order to develop recommendations for addressing this underserved population's unmet needs, with a focus on promoting inclusivity and equity in nursing education. We suggest that academic and clinical leaders, disability services personnel, clinical educators, healthcare administrators, and nursing faculty must collaborate to address accessibility for these students. Strategic planning and proactive dialogue can lay the groundwork for supporting nursing students with service animals. Early action can create a foundation for sustainable policies that ensure student success while maintaining safe patient care.