Healthcare professionals may be unfamiliar with military culture, and may face challenges forming relationships with veteran patients. Because forming a trusting relationship with a healthcare provider is important in patients’ healthcare experience, and may influence the extent that veterans engage in care and comply with needed treatment, this aspect of healthcare requires further study in order to improve veterans receipt of effective healthcare.
This project addresses gaps in the healthcare sector regarding healthcare providers’ knowledge and familiarity with military culture. It also addresses a research gap in our understanding of how healthcare providers’ military cultural competence impacts veteran patients.
The purpose of this project will be to design and implement a military culture training for health care providers to increase quality of care for veterans. The study will compare how primary care providers’ receipt of military culture training influences veteran patients’ perceptions of care.
As a part of the study, research personnel will identify and contact veteran patients seen at Seton who may be interested in serving on Seton Veteran Choice Advisory Board. The board will provide input regarding design of the provider training. Primary care providers will be recruited to participate in the study. One group of providers will receive this training and another group will be emailed a link to an online Powerpoint training in military culture. Providers will be assessed on their level of military cultural competence before and after providers attend training to assess for changes in knowledge. The project will administer healthcare satisfaction questionnaires to patients after receiving medical care from providers who received training in order to assess whether either training influenced how they experienced the care they received. Finally, the team will assess the effectiveness of training through data analysis of provider pre- and post- assessments and patient post-training surveys with an end goal to produce a comprehensive research report that describes the extent that each military culture training format influenced veteran patients’ perception of healthcare.