HEIDELBERG, Germany — Three years ago Landstuhl Regional Medical Center developed the Combat and Operational Stress Reaction Staff Resiliency (COSR/SR) program to address the trauma and loss of empathy health care providers face as a result of combat and operational stress. The Army’s new Provider Resilience Training program is designed to further that care.
“(Combat and operational stress) is part of the spectrum of emotional and spiritual and psychosocial reactions that come to people in the aftermath of some sort of a trauma,” said Chaplain (Col.) James R. Griffith, chief of LRMC’s clinical pastoral division. LRMC’s health care providers sometimes experience the secondary trauma of treating those patients because they identify with them very closely, he said.
“When you’re in an intensive care unit or a burn ward, and you’re caring for a young Soldier who was wounded ‘downrange,’ you look at him and think, ‘That could be my son on the table,’ Griffith said. “The combat (and) operational stress part is that there may be a little bit of avoidance, where they’ve had enough and they need a break before they go into another ICU room.”
PRT is designed to assist military health care providers who may be experiencing provider fatigue to “recharge.”
