The Exploration of the GWOT Combat Amputee's Experience With Longitudinal Care: A Qualitative Study

Contemporary advances in combat medicine have allowed greater numbers of wounded service members to survive their injuries. An estimated 1,705 combat veterans sustained major lower or upper extremity amputations between 2001 and 2017 during the Global War on Terror. This study intends to answer the following question utilizing a qualitative study design: What were the common and abnormal experiences of the Global War on Terror combat amputees relative to their mechanism of injury, perception of injury, and systems of care utilized during their recovery and rehabilitation process?.

During the months of December 2022 and January 2023, individual semi-structured interviews were conducted with U.S. Marines that served in the Global War on Terror (total n = 10). Deductive and inductive approaches were employed to identify codes, themes, and meta-themes in the data.

All participants deployed to Afghanistan between the years 2010 and 2014 and were assigned to the following military occupational specialties: Explosive Ordnance Disposal technicians (total n = 2); combat engineers (total n = 2); and infantrymen (total n = 6). Analysis of data collected from interviews highlighted these key observations: (1) Themes in the combat amputee experience include support, systems of care, and mindset and (2) the themes synergistically contribute to the meta-themes mental health and pain and vice versa. As all participants were subjected to a blast mechanism of injury, it is difficult to determine if this played a role in deviating rehabilitation and recovery processes. Perception of injury and how well participants adapted to their new lifestyle, meaning how optimistic they were, appeared to play a significant role in recovery. Participants had mixed feelings about the care they had received but generally spoke favorably of military hospitals and were frustrated with the Veteran Affairs, and there was no clear consensus on their relationship with civilian health care, though most participants chose to seek most of their care through the Veteran Affairs.

Based on the research question, this study found an intricate relationship between mental health, pain, and the experiences of the participants regarding their care and rehabilitation. However, the nature of qualitative research makes it impossible to determine generalizations that can be used to create meaningful change to address improving combat amputee veteran care. Further research into long-term health outcomes based on hypotheses not evaluated in existing literature would further improve the ability of health care providers to care for this unique patient population.