Ep63 Sally Thompson-Iritani on laboratory animal care, positive interactions, and human wellbeing
Content warning: This podcast includes descriptive content related to laboratory animals which some listeners may find distressing.
Sally Thompson-Iritani is the Asst. Vice Provost, Animal Care, Outreach & 3Rs and Clinical Associate Professor at the University of Washington. Additionally, she is a Certified Compassion Fatigue Professional and a Human-Animal Bond Practitioner.
Sally shares with us how her love of animals developed from her love of cats. Despite not being allowed one as a child due to living in a small apartment, she found interacting with them comforting. Through this, Sally’s mum nurtured her understanding of ensuring an animal is provided with all their needs. Sally developed an interest in the care provided to research animals due to her childhood friend's father completing research on mice at a university. This was further developed when she read an article on a neuroscience study that used non-human primates, whereby Sally questioned herself on the methods used to care for these primates. Her mum suggested it could be a possible career choice for Sally.
Sally studied a PhD focusing on how the environment can affect foetal development, primarily concentrating on the effects of methylmercury. She conducted this study using the mouse, as foetal development can only be studied in situ. When Sally finished her studies, she worked in a biotechnology company on therapeutics to develop medications and therapies.
Sally informs us that many measures put in place to protect animals in research are globally universal. This not only ensures the animals are well cared for, but the study outcomes are reliably repeatable. This is regulated and updated through organisations such as ALAC International.
Sabrina and Sally discuss the importance of laboratory animals in developing treatments, and how the resulting outcomes have saved lives. They agree how they are both grateful so aim to improve the welfare of these animals. Sally expands that without laboratory animals, many animals such as those in zoos and in agriculture have received better care due to the development of surgeries, medicines and vaccines.
Sally informs us how animal care during the covid pandemic has been tough for everyone. She quotes the most difficult bit being the lack of social interaction between caregivers during the workday, which was counteracted by using Zoom during lunchtimes.
Sally explains about her work at the Northwest Association for Biomedical Research, and how the organisation is committed to support the biomedical community and inform others of its importance.
Sally talks about human wellbeing and her work as a Certified Compassion Fatigue Professional. She explains how compassion fatigue originated in nursing and spread out across all caring roles including laboratory animal caregivers. She describes how the role is mentally and emotionally difficult as carers forge bonds with animals that can be euthanized during a study. Her role involves guiding people through these emotions, providing them coping mechanism tools. Sally then introduces us to research she collaborated with Teresa Schlanser and Peter Rabinowitz on compassion fatigue in satisfaction in US army laboratory animal medicine personnel. It showed the importance of a good support network for improved resilience.
Sally concludes by explaining the benefits of positive reinforcement training across all animal disciplines. She references how it has been used to train non-human primates within neuroscience to move from their enclosure to the study area. She also mentioned recent work to 'litter train' dairy cattle to excrete in one area to improve waste management.
Learn more about Sally Thompson-Iritani HERE
Link the collaborative research HERE
Watch how non-human primates have been trained HERE
Watch how dairy cattle have been trained HERE
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