Military Culture: Core Competencies for Health Care Professionals
(Web)
Increasing numbers of health care professionals with no prior military service history or experience working with military Service Members, Veterans, or their families are being called upon to deliver patient care to these rapidly growing populations. For current and former military Servicemembers, the explicit organizational structures and implicit ideals and values comprising military culture play a significant and lifelong role in injury, illness, and recovery. In all fields of health care, but most especially in mental health evaluation and treatment, empathic therapeutic alliances and effective treatment plans require health care professionals to possess and utilize detailed knowledge, skills, and attitudes regarding military and Veteran cultures and subcultures. To meet this training need, the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) and the Department of Defense (DoD) have jointly sponsored a plan to develop and implement an online Military Culture Training Curriculum for health care professionals. The curriculum for this training will encourage military cultural competency in health care professionals through the provision of interactive online training in the requisite knowledge, skills, and attitudes.