Where Do Soldiers Really Come From? A Faculty Development Workshop on Veteran-Centered Care

Area of Science:

• Medical Education
• Veterans Health
• Health Disparities

Background:

• Caring for veterans presents unique challenges due to military reintegration issues.
• Both civilian and Veterans Affairs (VA) health systems face difficulties in providing veteran-centered care.
• There is a growing need for healthcare professionals to understand and address the specific medical concerns of veterans.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop and implement a faculty development workshop for clinicians on veteran-centered care.
• To enhance healthcare professionals' understanding of veteran reintegration, health disparities, and treatment strategies.
• To evaluate the workshop's impact on participants' knowledge, attitudes, and skills regarding veteran care.

Main Methods:

• A faculty development workshop was created using the documentary "Where Soldiers Come From."
• The workshop incorporated topics such as unconscious bias, service member trajectory, and care for posttraumatic stress disorder and traumatic brain injury.
• Active learning techniques including critical thinking, reflective writing, and group discussions were employed with 46 healthcare professionals across three locations.

Main Results:

• 84% of evaluated participants were VA employees.
• 78.1% reported changes in their knowledge, attitudes, or skills related to veteran care.
• A majority of participants (64.7%-79.4%) reported improved understanding of care planning and preparing for returning veterans' issues.

Conclusions:

• The workshop effectively enhanced clinicians' capacity to provide veteran-centered care.
• Content from the workshop has been adapted into a massive open online course (MOOC) for wider dissemination.
• Future steps include delivering the workshop to non-VA providers and collecting further evaluation data.