Learning From Your Military and Veteran Patients

2 CE’s

Military-connected patients and their families bring unique cultural background, values and beliefs to your clinical interactions with them. As with people from any other culture, asking the right questions can make a significant difference in your connection, leading to enhanced ability to provide the best care for this population.

This course provides a few simple concepts that can lead to important shifts in cultural awareness for providers, and can make a difference in their clinical relationships with military-connected people.

In addition, Dr. Kraft will discuss principles of resilience in medical personnel that have been proven to increase that reserve we all need in order to persevere through challenging and stressful experiences. Drawing from the experiences of military-connected people throughout generations of service, several specific ideas and techniques will be presented for providers to use personally, as well as with those with whom they work or supervise.

Learning Objectives

At the end of this presentation, medical providers and staff members will be able to:

1. Describe at least three cultural factors your Veteran patients want you to know about them, and identify how those will lead to specific questions you will ask during clinical encounters in the future.
2. Discuss the concept of resilience in medical staff members in the face of uncertain times, focusing on what we have learned from military-connected people and combat medicine principles.
3. Discuss one evidence-based resilience strategy you might begin to use in your practice, for yourselves or for your patients, to navigate stressful times and maintain inner strength

Faculty Biography

Heidi Squier Kraft received her Ph.D. in clinical psychology from the UC San Diego/SDSU Joint Doctoral Program in Clinical Psychology in 1996. She joined the Navy during her internship at Duke University Medical Center and went on to serve as both a flight and clinical psychologist. Her active duty assignments included the Naval Safety Center, the Naval Health Research Center and Naval Hospital Jacksonville, FL. While on flight status, she flew in nearly every aircraft in the Navy and Marine Corps inventory, including more than 100 hours in the F/A-18 Hornet, primarily with Marine Corps squadrons. In February 2004, she deployed to western Iraq for seven months with a Marine Corps surgical company, when her boy and girl twins were 15-months-old. Rule Number Two is a memoir of that experience. Dr. Kraft left active duty in 2005, after nine years in the Navy. She currently serves as Chief Clinical Officer at PsychArmor Institute, a national nonprofit that provides free online education for those who live with, care for, and work with military Veterans. She is frequently invited to speak at conferences and panels on combat stress, stigma and caring for the caregiver. She is a lecturer at San Diego State University, where she teaches stress, trauma and the psychological experience of combat, as well as Health Psychology, Abnormal Psychology and Infant and Child Development. Dr. Kraft lives in San Diego with her husband Mike, a former Marine Harrier pilot, and her twins Brian and Meg, who have no memory of their mother’s time in Iraq.