Palliative Care

Veterans living with cancer need comprehensive assessment that includes supportive psychosocial care. The National Comprehensive Cancer Network (NCCN) and American College of Surgeons Commission on Cancer require accredited cancer centers to evaluate psychosocial distress and provide appropriate triage and treatment for all patients.^1-3 Implementing psychosocial distress screening can be difficult because of procedural barriers and time constraints, clinic and supportive care resources, and lack of knowledge about how to access supportive services.

Distress screening protocols must be designed to address the specific needs of each population. To improve screening for cancer-related distress, deliver effective supportive services, and gain agreement on distress screening standards of care, the Coleman Foundation supported development of the Coleman Supportive Oncology Collaborative (CSOC), a project of 135 interdisciplinary health care professionals from 25 Chicago-area cancer care institutions.⁴

The Jesse Brown US Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) Medical Center (JBVAMC) was chosen to assess cancer-related concerns among veterans using the CSOC screening tool and to improve access to supportive oncology. JBVAMC provides care to approximately 49,000 veterans in Chicago, Illinois, and northwestern Indiana. The JBVAMC patient population includes a large number of veterans with dual diagnoses (co-occurring substance use and mental health disorders) and veterans experiencing homelessness.

Delivering integrated screening and oncologic care that is culture and age appropriate is particularly important for veterans given their unique risk factors. The veteran population is considered vulnerable in terms of health status, psychological functioning, and social context. Veterans who use the VA health system as a principal source of care have poorer health, greater comorbid medical conditions, and an increased risk of mortality and suicide compared with the general population.^5,6 Poorer health status in veterans also may relate to old age, low income, poor education, psychological health, and minority race.^7-9

Past studies point to unique risk factors for cancer and poor cancer adjustment among veterans, which may complicate cancer treatment and end-of-life/survivorship care. Veteran-specific risk factors include military-related exposures, particularly Agent Orange and morbidity/mortality secondary to comorbid medical and psychiatric conditions (eg, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, diabetes mellitus, and posttraumatic stress disorder [PTSD]).^10-12 Moreover, the geriatric veteran population continues to grow,with increasing rates of cancer that require unique considerations for effective cancer care.^13,14 Despite this, there are minimal data to inform best practices and supportive care approaches for veterans with cancer. Lack of guidelines specific to veterans and other populations with increased psychosocial challenges may impede successful cancer care, making distress screening procedures particularly important. This is especially the case for the JBVAMC, which serves primarily African American urban-dwelling veterans who experience high rates of cancer disparities, including increased rates of mortality and increased levels of psychosocial distress.^15,16

The goals of this program were to (1) examine levels of psychological, physical, financial, and treatment-related distress in a large sample of urban-dwelling veterans; (2) create a streamlined, sustainable process to screen a large number of veterans receiving cancer care in the outpatient setting and connect them with available supportive services; and (3) educate oncology physicians, nurses, and other staff about cancer-related distress and concerns using in-service trainings and interpersonal interactions to improve patient care. Our program was based on a Primary Care Mental Health Integration (PCMHI) model that embeds health psychologists in general medical clinics to better reach veterans dealing with mental health issues. We tailored for palliative care involvement.

Studies of this model have shown that mental health integration improves access to mental health services and mental health treatment outcomes and has higher patient and provider satisfaction.¹⁷ We were also influenced by the construct of the patient aligned care team (PACT) social worker who, in this veteran-centered approach, often functions as a care coordinator. Social work responsibilities include assessment of patients’ stressors including adjusting to the medical conditions, identifying untreated or undertreated mental health or substance abuse issues, economic instability, legal problems, and inadequate housing and transportation, which can often be exacerbated during cancer treatment.¹⁸

Methods

This institutional review board at JBVAMC reviewed and exempted this quality improvement program using the SQUIRE framework.¹⁹ It was led by a group of palliative care clinicians, psychologists, and administrators who have worked with the oncology service for many years, primarily in the care of hospitalized patients. Common palliative care services include providing care for patients with serious illness diagnosis through the illness trajectory.

Setting

At the start of this program, we assessed the current clinic workflow to determine how to best screen and assist veterans experiencing distress. We met with team members individually to identify the best method of clinic integration, including attending medical oncologists, medical oncology fellows, psychology interns, oncology nursing staff, the oncology nurse coordinator, and clinic clerks.

The JBVAMC provides cancer care through 4 half-day medical hematology-oncology clinics that serve about 50 patients per half-day clinic. The clinics are staffed by hematology-oncology fellows supervised by hematology-oncology attending physicians, who are affiliated with 2 academic medical centers. These clinics are staffed by 3 registered nurses (RNs) and a licensed practical nurse (LPN) and are adjacent to a chemotherapy infusion clinic with unique nursing staff. The JBVAMC also provides a variety of supportive care services, including extensive mental health and substance use treatment, physical and occupational therapy, acupuncture, nutrition, social work, and housing services. Following our assessment, it was evident that there were a low number of referrals from oncology clinics to supportive care services, mostly due to lack of knowledge of resources and unclear referral procedures.

Based on clinical volume, we determined that our screening program could best be implemented through a stepped approach beginning in one clinic and expanding thereafter. We began by having a palliative care physician and health psychology intern embedded in 1 weekly half-day clinic and a health psychology intern embedded in a second weekly half-day clinic. Our program included 2 health psychology interns (for each academic year of the program) who were supervised by a JBVA health psychologist.

About 15 months after successful integration within the first 2 half-day clinics, we expanded the screening program to staff an additional half-day medical oncology clinic with a palliative care APRN. This allowed us to expand the screening tool distribution and collection to 3 of 4 of the weekly half-day oncology clinics as well as to meet individually with veterans experiencing high levels of distress. Veterans were flagged as having high distress levels by either the results of their completed screening tool or by referral from a medical oncology physician. We initially established screening in clinics that were sufficiently staffed to ensure that screens were appropriately distributed and reviewed. Patients seen in nonparticipating clinics were referred to outpatient social work, mental health and/or outpatient palliative care according to oncology fellows’ clinical assessments of the patient. All oncology fellows received education about distress screening and methods for referring to supportive care. Our clinic screening program extended from February 2017 through January 2020.

Screening

Program staff screened patients with new cancer diagnoses, then identified patients for follow-up screens. This tracking allowed staff to identify patients with oncology appointments that day and cross-reference patients needing a follow-up screen.

Following feedback from the clinic nurses, we determined that nurses would provide the distress tool to patients in paper form after they completed their assessment of vitals and waited to be seen by their medical oncologist. The patient would then deliver their completed form to the nurse who would combine it with the patient’s clinic notes for the oncologist to review. Veterans who reported elevated 4-question Patient Health Questionnaire (PHQ-4) scores ≥ 6 were seen immediately by program staff. Veterans were referred to social work or psychiatry services for a same day visit if they endorsed a high level of psychological distress during clinical examination. They were referred for other supportive care services if they were determined to have practical, family, or nutrition unmet distress needs by either the program staff or oncology fellows. Program staff provided guidance to medical oncology fellows for needed referrals including social work, mental health, and palliative care follow ups (eAppendix A available at doi:10.12788/fp.0158).

Veterans referred for supportive care services were contacted by the relevant clinical administrator by phone to schedule an intake; for social work referrals, patients were either seen in a walk-in office located in a colocated building or contacted by a social worker by phone.

Our screening tool was the Coleman Foundation Supportive Oncology Collaborative Screening Tool, compiled from validated instruments. Patients completed this screening tool, which includes the PHQ-4, NCCN problem list concerns, adapted Mini Nutrition Assessment and PROMIS Pain and Fatigue measure (eAppendix B available at doi:10.12788/fp.0158).^20-22

We also worked with the VA Computerized Patient Record System (CPRS) to create an electronic template for the screening tool. Completed screening tools were manually entered by the physician, psychologists, or APRN into the CPRS chart.

We analyzed the different supportive care services available at the JBVAMC and noticed that many supportive services were available, yet these services were often separated. Therefore, we created a consult flowsheet to assist oncologists in placing referrals. These supportive care services include mental health services, a cancer support group, home health care, social services, nutrition, physical medicine and rehabilitation, and other specialty services.

Patient Education

The psychology and nursing staff created a patient information bulletin board where patients could access information about supportive services available at JBVAMC. This board required frequent replenishment of handouts because patients consulted the board regularly. Handouts and folders about common clinical issues also were placed in the clinic treatment rooms. We partnered with 2 local cancer support centers, Gilda’s Club and the Cancer Support Center, to make referrals for family members and/or caregivers who would benefit from additional support.

We provided in-service trainings for oncology fellows, including trainings on PTSD and substance abuse and their relationship to cancer care at the VA. These topics were chosen based on the feedback program staff received about perceived knowledge gaps from the oncology fellows. This program allowed for multiple informal conversations between that program staff and oncology fellows about overall patient care. We held trainings with the cancer coordinator and clinical nursing staff on strategies to identify and follow-up on cancer-related distress, and with oncology fellows to review the importance of distress screening and to instruct fellows on instructions for the consult flowsheet.

Funding

This program was funded by the Chicago-based Coleman Foundation as part of the CSOC. Funding was used to support a portion of time for administrative and clinical work of program staff, as well as data collection and analysis.

Results

We established 3 half-day integrated clinics where patients were screened and referred for services based on supportive oncology needs. In addition to our primary activities to screen and refer veterans, we held multiple educational sessions for colleagues, developed a workflow template, and integrated patient education materials into the clinics.

Screening

Veterans completed 1010 distress screens in 3 of 4 half-day oncology clinics over the 2.5-year project period. Veterans were screened at initial diagnosis and every 3 months, or during changes in their clinical care or disease status. As a result, 579 patients completed screening, with some patients doing several follow-up screens during their care. Integration of palliative care providers and health psychologists was instrumental in facilitating screening in these busy general medical oncology clinics. Most veterans were receptive to completing surveys with few refusing to fill out the survey.²³ Medical oncology fellows often used the completed screener to inform their review of systems (by reviewing the Coleman screener Physical and Other Concerns section) and connect with the supportive care staff present in clinic for patient’s identifying severe needs (ie, mental health distress or complex psychosocial needs). Veterans’ rates of distress needs and successfuloutcomes of integration with mental health and social work services have been reported elsewhere.²³

The mean (SD) age for veterans in this cohort was 72 (9.5) years. Participants were primarily African American veterans (70%), with mostly advanced disease (Table 1). Participants endorsed elevated distress needs compared with other patient populations screened in Chicago through the CSOC for depressed mood, pain, housing, transportation, and physical, nutrition, and treatment concerns.²³ Elevated presence of needs was especially prominent for food, housing and insurance/medical needs; physical concerns; nutrition, and treatment- or care-related concerns. Veterans in this cohort reported extensive financial and housing concerns: 10.4% reported food and housing concerns, 18.6% reported transportation concerns, and 9.0% reported issues paying for medical care or medications (Table 2).²⁰ Anecdotally, many experienced job loss or strain with their cancer diagnosis or were living at the poverty level before their diagnosis.

Discussion

This project created a successful program to screen veterans for psychosocial distress and triage them to appropriate services. During the project, patients in VA-outpatient oncology clinics reported significant cancer-related distress due to baseline psychosocial needs, changes in emotional and physical functioning, logistical and financial challenges of receiving cancer care, and lack of instrumental support.²³

Staff education supported successful buy-in, development and implementation of supportive oncology programs. We used a combination of in-service trainings, online trainings, and handouts to provide evidence for distress screening.²⁴ Highlighting the evidence-base that demonstrates how cancer-related distress screening improves cancer and quality of life outcomes helped to address physician reluctance to accept the additional requirements needed to address veterans’ psychosocial needs and care concerns. To increase buy-in and collaboration among team members and foster heightened understanding between providers and patients, we recommend creating accessible education for all staff levels.

One specific area of education we focused on was primary palliative care, which includes the core competencies of communication and symptom management recommended for generalists and specialists of all disciplines.²⁵ Program staff supported oncology fellows in developing their primary palliative care skills by being available to discuss basic symptom management and communication issues. VA cancer care programs could benefit from ongoing palliative care education of oncology staff to facilitate primary palliative care as well as earlier integration of secondary palliative care when needed.²⁶ Secondary palliative care or care provided directly by the palliative care team assists with complex symptom management or communication issues. For these needs, oncology fellows were encouraged to refer to either the palliative care staff available in one of the half-day clinics or to the outpatient palliative care clinic. As a unique strength, the VA allows veterans to receive concurrent cancer-directed therapy and hospice care, which enables earlier referrals to hospice care and higher quality end-of-life care and emphasizes the need for primary palliative care in oncology.^27,28

Integrating supportive oncology team members, such as licensed clinical social worker and psychology interns, was successful. This was modeled on the VA PACT, which focuses on prevention, health promotion, coordination and chronic disease management.²⁹ Social determinants of health have a major impact on health outcomes especially in veteran-specific and African American populations, making screening for distress critical.^30-32 The VA Office of Health Equity actively addresses health inequities by supporting initiation of screening programs for social determinants of health, including education, employment, exposure to abuse and violence, food insecurity, housing instability, legal needs, social isolation, transportation needs, and utility needs. This is especially needed for African-American individuals who are not only more likely to experience cancer, but also more likely to be negatively impacted by the consequences of cancer diagnosis/treatment, such as complications related to one’s job security, access to care, adverse effects, and other highly distressing needs.^33,34

Our program found that veterans with cancer often had concerns associated with food and housing insecurity, transportation and paying for medication or medical care, and screening allowed health care providers to detect and address these social determinants of health through referrals to VA and community-specific programs. Social workers integrated into VA cancer clinics are uniquely equipped to coordinate distress screening and support continuity of care by virtue of their training, connections to preexisting VA supportive services, and knowledge of community resources. This model could be used in other VA specialty clinics serving veterans with chronic illness and those with high levels of physical frailty.³⁵

Our ability to roll out distress screening was scaffolded by technological integration into existing VA systems (eg, screening results in CPRS and electronic referrals). Screening procedures could have been even more efficient with improved technology (Table 3). For example, technological limitations made it challenging to easily identify patients due for screening, requiring a cumbersome process of tracking, collecting and entering patients’ paper forms. Health care providers seeking to develop a distress screening program should consider investing in technology that allows for identification of patients requiring screening at a predetermined interval, completion of screening via tablet or personal device, integration of screening responses into the electronic health record, and automatic generation of notifications to the treating physician and appropriate support services.

Conclusions

Veterans with cancer benefited from enhanced screening and psychosocial service availability, similar to a PCMHI model. Robust screening programs helped advocate for veterans dealing with the effects of poverty through identification of need and referral to existing VA programs and services quickly and efficiently. Providing comprehensive care within ambulatory cancer clinics can address cancer-related distress and any potential barriers to care in real time. VA hospitals typically offer an array of supportive services to address veterans’ psychosocial needs, yet these services tend to be siloed. Integrated referrals can help to resolve such access barriers. Since many veterans with burdensome cancers are not able to see their VA primary care physician regularly, offering comprehensive care within medical oncology ensures complete and integrated care that includes psychosocial screening.

We believe that this program is an example of a mechanism for oncologists and palliative care clinicians to integrate their care in a way that identifies needs and triages services for vulnerable veterans. As colleagues have written, “it is fundamental to our commitment to veterans that we ensure comparable, high quality care regardless of a veteran’s gender, race, or where they live.^”34 Health care providers may underestimate the extensive change a cancer diagnosis can have on a patient’s quality of life. Cancer diagnosis and treatment have a large impact on all individuals, but this impact may be greater for individuals in poverty due to inability to work from home, inflexible work hours, and limited support structures. By creating screening programs with psychosocial integration in oncology clinics such as we have described, we hope to improve access to more equitable care for vulnerable veterans.

Veterans living with cancer need comprehensive assessment that includes supportive psychosocial care. The National Comprehensive Cancer Network (NCCN) and American College of Surgeons Commission on Cancer require accredited cancer centers to evaluate psychosocial distress and provide appropriate triage and treatment for all patients.^1-3 Implementing psychosocial distress screening can be difficult because of procedural barriers and time constraints, clinic and supportive care resources, and lack of knowledge about how to access supportive services.

Distress screening protocols must be designed to address the specific needs of each population. To improve screening for cancer-related distress, deliver effective supportive services, and gain agreement on distress screening standards of care, the Coleman Foundation supported development of the Coleman Supportive Oncology Collaborative (CSOC), a project of 135 interdisciplinary health care professionals from 25 Chicago-area cancer care institutions.⁴

The Jesse Brown US Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) Medical Center (JBVAMC) was chosen to assess cancer-related concerns among veterans using the CSOC screening tool and to improve access to supportive oncology. JBVAMC provides care to approximately 49,000 veterans in Chicago, Illinois, and northwestern Indiana. The JBVAMC patient population includes a large number of veterans with dual diagnoses (co-occurring substance use and mental health disorders) and veterans experiencing homelessness.

Delivering integrated screening and oncologic care that is culture and age appropriate is particularly important for veterans given their unique risk factors. The veteran population is considered vulnerable in terms of health status, psychological functioning, and social context. Veterans who use the VA health system as a principal source of care have poorer health, greater comorbid medical conditions, and an increased risk of mortality and suicide compared with the general population.^5,6 Poorer health status in veterans also may relate to old age, low income, poor education, psychological health, and minority race.^7-9

Past studies point to unique risk factors for cancer and poor cancer adjustment among veterans, which may complicate cancer treatment and end-of-life/survivorship care. Veteran-specific risk factors include military-related exposures, particularly Agent Orange and morbidity/mortality secondary to comorbid medical and psychiatric conditions (eg, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, diabetes mellitus, and posttraumatic stress disorder [PTSD]).^10-12 Moreover, the geriatric veteran population continues to grow,with increasing rates of cancer that require unique considerations for effective cancer care.^13,14 Despite this, there are minimal data to inform best practices and supportive care approaches for veterans with cancer. Lack of guidelines specific to veterans and other populations with increased psychosocial challenges may impede successful cancer care, making distress screening procedures particularly important. This is especially the case for the JBVAMC, which serves primarily African American urban-dwelling veterans who experience high rates of cancer disparities, including increased rates of mortality and increased levels of psychosocial distress.^15,16

The goals of this program were to (1) examine levels of psychological, physical, financial, and treatment-related distress in a large sample of urban-dwelling veterans; (2) create a streamlined, sustainable process to screen a large number of veterans receiving cancer care in the outpatient setting and connect them with available supportive services; and (3) educate oncology physicians, nurses, and other staff about cancer-related distress and concerns using in-service trainings and interpersonal interactions to improve patient care. Our program was based on a Primary Care Mental Health Integration (PCMHI) model that embeds health psychologists in general medical clinics to better reach veterans dealing with mental health issues. We tailored for palliative care involvement.

Studies of this model have shown that mental health integration improves access to mental health services and mental health treatment outcomes and has higher patient and provider satisfaction.¹⁷ We were also influenced by the construct of the patient aligned care team (PACT) social worker who, in this veteran-centered approach, often functions as a care coordinator. Social work responsibilities include assessment of patients’ stressors including adjusting to the medical conditions, identifying untreated or undertreated mental health or substance abuse issues, economic instability, legal problems, and inadequate housing and transportation, which can often be exacerbated during cancer treatment.¹⁸

Methods

This institutional review board at JBVAMC reviewed and exempted this quality improvement program using the SQUIRE framework.¹⁹ It was led by a group of palliative care clinicians, psychologists, and administrators who have worked with the oncology service for many years, primarily in the care of hospitalized patients. Common palliative care services include providing care for patients with serious illness diagnosis through the illness trajectory.

Setting

At the start of this program, we assessed the current clinic workflow to determine how to best screen and assist veterans experiencing distress. We met with team members individually to identify the best method of clinic integration, including attending medical oncologists, medical oncology fellows, psychology interns, oncology nursing staff, the oncology nurse coordinator, and clinic clerks.

The JBVAMC provides cancer care through 4 half-day medical hematology-oncology clinics that serve about 50 patients per half-day clinic. The clinics are staffed by hematology-oncology fellows supervised by hematology-oncology attending physicians, who are affiliated with 2 academic medical centers. These clinics are staffed by 3 registered nurses (RNs) and a licensed practical nurse (LPN) and are adjacent to a chemotherapy infusion clinic with unique nursing staff. The JBVAMC also provides a variety of supportive care services, including extensive mental health and substance use treatment, physical and occupational therapy, acupuncture, nutrition, social work, and housing services. Following our assessment, it was evident that there were a low number of referrals from oncology clinics to supportive care services, mostly due to lack of knowledge of resources and unclear referral procedures.

Based on clinical volume, we determined that our screening program could best be implemented through a stepped approach beginning in one clinic and expanding thereafter. We began by having a palliative care physician and health psychology intern embedded in 1 weekly half-day clinic and a health psychology intern embedded in a second weekly half-day clinic. Our program included 2 health psychology interns (for each academic year of the program) who were supervised by a JBVA health psychologist.

About 15 months after successful integration within the first 2 half-day clinics, we expanded the screening program to staff an additional half-day medical oncology clinic with a palliative care APRN. This allowed us to expand the screening tool distribution and collection to 3 of 4 of the weekly half-day oncology clinics as well as to meet individually with veterans experiencing high levels of distress. Veterans were flagged as having high distress levels by either the results of their completed screening tool or by referral from a medical oncology physician. We initially established screening in clinics that were sufficiently staffed to ensure that screens were appropriately distributed and reviewed. Patients seen in nonparticipating clinics were referred to outpatient social work, mental health and/or outpatient palliative care according to oncology fellows’ clinical assessments of the patient. All oncology fellows received education about distress screening and methods for referring to supportive care. Our clinic screening program extended from February 2017 through January 2020.

Screening

Program staff screened patients with new cancer diagnoses, then identified patients for follow-up screens. This tracking allowed staff to identify patients with oncology appointments that day and cross-reference patients needing a follow-up screen.

Following feedback from the clinic nurses, we determined that nurses would provide the distress tool to patients in paper form after they completed their assessment of vitals and waited to be seen by their medical oncologist. The patient would then deliver their completed form to the nurse who would combine it with the patient’s clinic notes for the oncologist to review. Veterans who reported elevated 4-question Patient Health Questionnaire (PHQ-4) scores ≥ 6 were seen immediately by program staff. Veterans were referred to social work or psychiatry services for a same day visit if they endorsed a high level of psychological distress during clinical examination. They were referred for other supportive care services if they were determined to have practical, family, or nutrition unmet distress needs by either the program staff or oncology fellows. Program staff provided guidance to medical oncology fellows for needed referrals including social work, mental health, and palliative care follow ups (eAppendix A available at doi:10.12788/fp.0158).

Veterans referred for supportive care services were contacted by the relevant clinical administrator by phone to schedule an intake; for social work referrals, patients were either seen in a walk-in office located in a colocated building or contacted by a social worker by phone.

Our screening tool was the Coleman Foundation Supportive Oncology Collaborative Screening Tool, compiled from validated instruments. Patients completed this screening tool, which includes the PHQ-4, NCCN problem list concerns, adapted Mini Nutrition Assessment and PROMIS Pain and Fatigue measure (eAppendix B available at doi:10.12788/fp.0158).^20-22

We also worked with the VA Computerized Patient Record System (CPRS) to create an electronic template for the screening tool. Completed screening tools were manually entered by the physician, psychologists, or APRN into the CPRS chart.

We analyzed the different supportive care services available at the JBVAMC and noticed that many supportive services were available, yet these services were often separated. Therefore, we created a consult flowsheet to assist oncologists in placing referrals. These supportive care services include mental health services, a cancer support group, home health care, social services, nutrition, physical medicine and rehabilitation, and other specialty services.

Patient Education

The psychology and nursing staff created a patient information bulletin board where patients could access information about supportive services available at JBVAMC. This board required frequent replenishment of handouts because patients consulted the board regularly. Handouts and folders about common clinical issues also were placed in the clinic treatment rooms. We partnered with 2 local cancer support centers, Gilda’s Club and the Cancer Support Center, to make referrals for family members and/or caregivers who would benefit from additional support.

We provided in-service trainings for oncology fellows, including trainings on PTSD and substance abuse and their relationship to cancer care at the VA. These topics were chosen based on the feedback program staff received about perceived knowledge gaps from the oncology fellows. This program allowed for multiple informal conversations between that program staff and oncology fellows about overall patient care. We held trainings with the cancer coordinator and clinical nursing staff on strategies to identify and follow-up on cancer-related distress, and with oncology fellows to review the importance of distress screening and to instruct fellows on instructions for the consult flowsheet.

Funding

This program was funded by the Chicago-based Coleman Foundation as part of the CSOC. Funding was used to support a portion of time for administrative and clinical work of program staff, as well as data collection and analysis.

Results

We established 3 half-day integrated clinics where patients were screened and referred for services based on supportive oncology needs. In addition to our primary activities to screen and refer veterans, we held multiple educational sessions for colleagues, developed a workflow template, and integrated patient education materials into the clinics.

Screening

Veterans completed 1010 distress screens in 3 of 4 half-day oncology clinics over the 2.5-year project period. Veterans were screened at initial diagnosis and every 3 months, or during changes in their clinical care or disease status. As a result, 579 patients completed screening, with some patients doing several follow-up screens during their care. Integration of palliative care providers and health psychologists was instrumental in facilitating screening in these busy general medical oncology clinics. Most veterans were receptive to completing surveys with few refusing to fill out the survey.²³ Medical oncology fellows often used the completed screener to inform their review of systems (by reviewing the Coleman screener Physical and Other Concerns section) and connect with the supportive care staff present in clinic for patient’s identifying severe needs (ie, mental health distress or complex psychosocial needs). Veterans’ rates of distress needs and successfuloutcomes of integration with mental health and social work services have been reported elsewhere.²³

The mean (SD) age for veterans in this cohort was 72 (9.5) years. Participants were primarily African American veterans (70%), with mostly advanced disease (Table 1). Participants endorsed elevated distress needs compared with other patient populations screened in Chicago through the CSOC for depressed mood, pain, housing, transportation, and physical, nutrition, and treatment concerns.²³ Elevated presence of needs was especially prominent for food, housing and insurance/medical needs; physical concerns; nutrition, and treatment- or care-related concerns. Veterans in this cohort reported extensive financial and housing concerns: 10.4% reported food and housing concerns, 18.6% reported transportation concerns, and 9.0% reported issues paying for medical care or medications (Table 2).²⁰ Anecdotally, many experienced job loss or strain with their cancer diagnosis or were living at the poverty level before their diagnosis.

Discussion

This project created a successful program to screen veterans for psychosocial distress and triage them to appropriate services. During the project, patients in VA-outpatient oncology clinics reported significant cancer-related distress due to baseline psychosocial needs, changes in emotional and physical functioning, logistical and financial challenges of receiving cancer care, and lack of instrumental support.²³

Staff education supported successful buy-in, development and implementation of supportive oncology programs. We used a combination of in-service trainings, online trainings, and handouts to provide evidence for distress screening.²⁴ Highlighting the evidence-base that demonstrates how cancer-related distress screening improves cancer and quality of life outcomes helped to address physician reluctance to accept the additional requirements needed to address veterans’ psychosocial needs and care concerns. To increase buy-in and collaboration among team members and foster heightened understanding between providers and patients, we recommend creating accessible education for all staff levels.

One specific area of education we focused on was primary palliative care, which includes the core competencies of communication and symptom management recommended for generalists and specialists of all disciplines.²⁵ Program staff supported oncology fellows in developing their primary palliative care skills by being available to discuss basic symptom management and communication issues. VA cancer care programs could benefit from ongoing palliative care education of oncology staff to facilitate primary palliative care as well as earlier integration of secondary palliative care when needed.²⁶ Secondary palliative care or care provided directly by the palliative care team assists with complex symptom management or communication issues. For these needs, oncology fellows were encouraged to refer to either the palliative care staff available in one of the half-day clinics or to the outpatient palliative care clinic. As a unique strength, the VA allows veterans to receive concurrent cancer-directed therapy and hospice care, which enables earlier referrals to hospice care and higher quality end-of-life care and emphasizes the need for primary palliative care in oncology.^27,28

Integrating supportive oncology team members, such as licensed clinical social worker and psychology interns, was successful. This was modeled on the VA PACT, which focuses on prevention, health promotion, coordination and chronic disease management.²⁹ Social determinants of health have a major impact on health outcomes especially in veteran-specific and African American populations, making screening for distress critical.^30-32 The VA Office of Health Equity actively addresses health inequities by supporting initiation of screening programs for social determinants of health, including education, employment, exposure to abuse and violence, food insecurity, housing instability, legal needs, social isolation, transportation needs, and utility needs. This is especially needed for African-American individuals who are not only more likely to experience cancer, but also more likely to be negatively impacted by the consequences of cancer diagnosis/treatment, such as complications related to one’s job security, access to care, adverse effects, and other highly distressing needs.^33,34

Our program found that veterans with cancer often had concerns associated with food and housing insecurity, transportation and paying for medication or medical care, and screening allowed health care providers to detect and address these social determinants of health through referrals to VA and community-specific programs. Social workers integrated into VA cancer clinics are uniquely equipped to coordinate distress screening and support continuity of care by virtue of their training, connections to preexisting VA supportive services, and knowledge of community resources. This model could be used in other VA specialty clinics serving veterans with chronic illness and those with high levels of physical frailty.³⁵

Our ability to roll out distress screening was scaffolded by technological integration into existing VA systems (eg, screening results in CPRS and electronic referrals). Screening procedures could have been even more efficient with improved technology (Table 3). For example, technological limitations made it challenging to easily identify patients due for screening, requiring a cumbersome process of tracking, collecting and entering patients’ paper forms. Health care providers seeking to develop a distress screening program should consider investing in technology that allows for identification of patients requiring screening at a predetermined interval, completion of screening via tablet or personal device, integration of screening responses into the electronic health record, and automatic generation of notifications to the treating physician and appropriate support services.

Conclusions

Veterans with cancer benefited from enhanced screening and psychosocial service availability, similar to a PCMHI model. Robust screening programs helped advocate for veterans dealing with the effects of poverty through identification of need and referral to existing VA programs and services quickly and efficiently. Providing comprehensive care within ambulatory cancer clinics can address cancer-related distress and any potential barriers to care in real time. VA hospitals typically offer an array of supportive services to address veterans’ psychosocial needs, yet these services tend to be siloed. Integrated referrals can help to resolve such access barriers. Since many veterans with burdensome cancers are not able to see their VA primary care physician regularly, offering comprehensive care within medical oncology ensures complete and integrated care that includes psychosocial screening.

We believe that this program is an example of a mechanism for oncologists and palliative care clinicians to integrate their care in a way that identifies needs and triages services for vulnerable veterans. As colleagues have written, “it is fundamental to our commitment to veterans that we ensure comparable, high quality care regardless of a veteran’s gender, race, or where they live.^”34 Health care providers may underestimate the extensive change a cancer diagnosis can have on a patient’s quality of life. Cancer diagnosis and treatment have a large impact on all individuals, but this impact may be greater for individuals in poverty due to inability to work from home, inflexible work hours, and limited support structures. By creating screening programs with psychosocial integration in oncology clinics such as we have described, we hope to improve access to more equitable care for vulnerable veterans.

Veterans living with cancer need comprehensive assessment that includes supportive psychosocial care. The National Comprehensive Cancer Network (NCCN) and American College of Surgeons Commission on Cancer require accredited cancer centers to evaluate psychosocial distress and provide appropriate triage and treatment for all patients.^1-3 Implementing psychosocial distress screening can be difficult because of procedural barriers and time constraints, clinic and supportive care resources, and lack of knowledge about how to access supportive services.

Distress screening protocols must be designed to address the specific needs of each population. To improve screening for cancer-related distress, deliver effective supportive services, and gain agreement on distress screening standards of care, the Coleman Foundation supported development of the Coleman Supportive Oncology Collaborative (CSOC), a project of 135 interdisciplinary health care professionals from 25 Chicago-area cancer care institutions.⁴

The Jesse Brown US Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) Medical Center (JBVAMC) was chosen to assess cancer-related concerns among veterans using the CSOC screening tool and to improve access to supportive oncology. JBVAMC provides care to approximately 49,000 veterans in Chicago, Illinois, and northwestern Indiana. The JBVAMC patient population includes a large number of veterans with dual diagnoses (co-occurring substance use and mental health disorders) and veterans experiencing homelessness.

Delivering integrated screening and oncologic care that is culture and age appropriate is particularly important for veterans given their unique risk factors. The veteran population is considered vulnerable in terms of health status, psychological functioning, and social context. Veterans who use the VA health system as a principal source of care have poorer health, greater comorbid medical conditions, and an increased risk of mortality and suicide compared with the general population.^5,6 Poorer health status in veterans also may relate to old age, low income, poor education, psychological health, and minority race.^7-9

Past studies point to unique risk factors for cancer and poor cancer adjustment among veterans, which may complicate cancer treatment and end-of-life/survivorship care. Veteran-specific risk factors include military-related exposures, particularly Agent Orange and morbidity/mortality secondary to comorbid medical and psychiatric conditions (eg, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, diabetes mellitus, and posttraumatic stress disorder [PTSD]).^10-12 Moreover, the geriatric veteran population continues to grow,with increasing rates of cancer that require unique considerations for effective cancer care.^13,14 Despite this, there are minimal data to inform best practices and supportive care approaches for veterans with cancer. Lack of guidelines specific to veterans and other populations with increased psychosocial challenges may impede successful cancer care, making distress screening procedures particularly important. This is especially the case for the JBVAMC, which serves primarily African American urban-dwelling veterans who experience high rates of cancer disparities, including increased rates of mortality and increased levels of psychosocial distress.^15,16

The goals of this program were to (1) examine levels of psychological, physical, financial, and treatment-related distress in a large sample of urban-dwelling veterans; (2) create a streamlined, sustainable process to screen a large number of veterans receiving cancer care in the outpatient setting and connect them with available supportive services; and (3) educate oncology physicians, nurses, and other staff about cancer-related distress and concerns using in-service trainings and interpersonal interactions to improve patient care. Our program was based on a Primary Care Mental Health Integration (PCMHI) model that embeds health psychologists in general medical clinics to better reach veterans dealing with mental health issues. We tailored for palliative care involvement.

Studies of this model have shown that mental health integration improves access to mental health services and mental health treatment outcomes and has higher patient and provider satisfaction.¹⁷ We were also influenced by the construct of the patient aligned care team (PACT) social worker who, in this veteran-centered approach, often functions as a care coordinator. Social work responsibilities include assessment of patients’ stressors including adjusting to the medical conditions, identifying untreated or undertreated mental health or substance abuse issues, economic instability, legal problems, and inadequate housing and transportation, which can often be exacerbated during cancer treatment.¹⁸

Methods

This institutional review board at JBVAMC reviewed and exempted this quality improvement program using the SQUIRE framework.¹⁹ It was led by a group of palliative care clinicians, psychologists, and administrators who have worked with the oncology service for many years, primarily in the care of hospitalized patients. Common palliative care services include providing care for patients with serious illness diagnosis through the illness trajectory.

Setting

At the start of this program, we assessed the current clinic workflow to determine how to best screen and assist veterans experiencing distress. We met with team members individually to identify the best method of clinic integration, including attending medical oncologists, medical oncology fellows, psychology interns, oncology nursing staff, the oncology nurse coordinator, and clinic clerks.

The JBVAMC provides cancer care through 4 half-day medical hematology-oncology clinics that serve about 50 patients per half-day clinic. The clinics are staffed by hematology-oncology fellows supervised by hematology-oncology attending physicians, who are affiliated with 2 academic medical centers. These clinics are staffed by 3 registered nurses (RNs) and a licensed practical nurse (LPN) and are adjacent to a chemotherapy infusion clinic with unique nursing staff. The JBVAMC also provides a variety of supportive care services, including extensive mental health and substance use treatment, physical and occupational therapy, acupuncture, nutrition, social work, and housing services. Following our assessment, it was evident that there were a low number of referrals from oncology clinics to supportive care services, mostly due to lack of knowledge of resources and unclear referral procedures.

Based on clinical volume, we determined that our screening program could best be implemented through a stepped approach beginning in one clinic and expanding thereafter. We began by having a palliative care physician and health psychology intern embedded in 1 weekly half-day clinic and a health psychology intern embedded in a second weekly half-day clinic. Our program included 2 health psychology interns (for each academic year of the program) who were supervised by a JBVA health psychologist.

About 15 months after successful integration within the first 2 half-day clinics, we expanded the screening program to staff an additional half-day medical oncology clinic with a palliative care APRN. This allowed us to expand the screening tool distribution and collection to 3 of 4 of the weekly half-day oncology clinics as well as to meet individually with veterans experiencing high levels of distress. Veterans were flagged as having high distress levels by either the results of their completed screening tool or by referral from a medical oncology physician. We initially established screening in clinics that were sufficiently staffed to ensure that screens were appropriately distributed and reviewed. Patients seen in nonparticipating clinics were referred to outpatient social work, mental health and/or outpatient palliative care according to oncology fellows’ clinical assessments of the patient. All oncology fellows received education about distress screening and methods for referring to supportive care. Our clinic screening program extended from February 2017 through January 2020.

Screening

Program staff screened patients with new cancer diagnoses, then identified patients for follow-up screens. This tracking allowed staff to identify patients with oncology appointments that day and cross-reference patients needing a follow-up screen.

Following feedback from the clinic nurses, we determined that nurses would provide the distress tool to patients in paper form after they completed their assessment of vitals and waited to be seen by their medical oncologist. The patient would then deliver their completed form to the nurse who would combine it with the patient’s clinic notes for the oncologist to review. Veterans who reported elevated 4-question Patient Health Questionnaire (PHQ-4) scores ≥ 6 were seen immediately by program staff. Veterans were referred to social work or psychiatry services for a same day visit if they endorsed a high level of psychological distress during clinical examination. They were referred for other supportive care services if they were determined to have practical, family, or nutrition unmet distress needs by either the program staff or oncology fellows. Program staff provided guidance to medical oncology fellows for needed referrals including social work, mental health, and palliative care follow ups (eAppendix A available at doi:10.12788/fp.0158).

Veterans referred for supportive care services were contacted by the relevant clinical administrator by phone to schedule an intake; for social work referrals, patients were either seen in a walk-in office located in a colocated building or contacted by a social worker by phone.

Our screening tool was the Coleman Foundation Supportive Oncology Collaborative Screening Tool, compiled from validated instruments. Patients completed this screening tool, which includes the PHQ-4, NCCN problem list concerns, adapted Mini Nutrition Assessment and PROMIS Pain and Fatigue measure (eAppendix B available at doi:10.12788/fp.0158).^20-22

We also worked with the VA Computerized Patient Record System (CPRS) to create an electronic template for the screening tool. Completed screening tools were manually entered by the physician, psychologists, or APRN into the CPRS chart.

We analyzed the different supportive care services available at the JBVAMC and noticed that many supportive services were available, yet these services were often separated. Therefore, we created a consult flowsheet to assist oncologists in placing referrals. These supportive care services include mental health services, a cancer support group, home health care, social services, nutrition, physical medicine and rehabilitation, and other specialty services.

Patient Education

The psychology and nursing staff created a patient information bulletin board where patients could access information about supportive services available at JBVAMC. This board required frequent replenishment of handouts because patients consulted the board regularly. Handouts and folders about common clinical issues also were placed in the clinic treatment rooms. We partnered with 2 local cancer support centers, Gilda’s Club and the Cancer Support Center, to make referrals for family members and/or caregivers who would benefit from additional support.

We provided in-service trainings for oncology fellows, including trainings on PTSD and substance abuse and their relationship to cancer care at the VA. These topics were chosen based on the feedback program staff received about perceived knowledge gaps from the oncology fellows. This program allowed for multiple informal conversations between that program staff and oncology fellows about overall patient care. We held trainings with the cancer coordinator and clinical nursing staff on strategies to identify and follow-up on cancer-related distress, and with oncology fellows to review the importance of distress screening and to instruct fellows on instructions for the consult flowsheet.

Funding

This program was funded by the Chicago-based Coleman Foundation as part of the CSOC. Funding was used to support a portion of time for administrative and clinical work of program staff, as well as data collection and analysis.

Results

We established 3 half-day integrated clinics where patients were screened and referred for services based on supportive oncology needs. In addition to our primary activities to screen and refer veterans, we held multiple educational sessions for colleagues, developed a workflow template, and integrated patient education materials into the clinics.

Screening

Veterans completed 1010 distress screens in 3 of 4 half-day oncology clinics over the 2.5-year project period. Veterans were screened at initial diagnosis and every 3 months, or during changes in their clinical care or disease status. As a result, 579 patients completed screening, with some patients doing several follow-up screens during their care. Integration of palliative care providers and health psychologists was instrumental in facilitating screening in these busy general medical oncology clinics. Most veterans were receptive to completing surveys with few refusing to fill out the survey.²³ Medical oncology fellows often used the completed screener to inform their review of systems (by reviewing the Coleman screener Physical and Other Concerns section) and connect with the supportive care staff present in clinic for patient’s identifying severe needs (ie, mental health distress or complex psychosocial needs). Veterans’ rates of distress needs and successfuloutcomes of integration with mental health and social work services have been reported elsewhere.²³

The mean (SD) age for veterans in this cohort was 72 (9.5) years. Participants were primarily African American veterans (70%), with mostly advanced disease (Table 1). Participants endorsed elevated distress needs compared with other patient populations screened in Chicago through the CSOC for depressed mood, pain, housing, transportation, and physical, nutrition, and treatment concerns.²³ Elevated presence of needs was especially prominent for food, housing and insurance/medical needs; physical concerns; nutrition, and treatment- or care-related concerns. Veterans in this cohort reported extensive financial and housing concerns: 10.4% reported food and housing concerns, 18.6% reported transportation concerns, and 9.0% reported issues paying for medical care or medications (Table 2).²⁰ Anecdotally, many experienced job loss or strain with their cancer diagnosis or were living at the poverty level before their diagnosis.

Discussion

This project created a successful program to screen veterans for psychosocial distress and triage them to appropriate services. During the project, patients in VA-outpatient oncology clinics reported significant cancer-related distress due to baseline psychosocial needs, changes in emotional and physical functioning, logistical and financial challenges of receiving cancer care, and lack of instrumental support.²³

Staff education supported successful buy-in, development and implementation of supportive oncology programs. We used a combination of in-service trainings, online trainings, and handouts to provide evidence for distress screening.²⁴ Highlighting the evidence-base that demonstrates how cancer-related distress screening improves cancer and quality of life outcomes helped to address physician reluctance to accept the additional requirements needed to address veterans’ psychosocial needs and care concerns. To increase buy-in and collaboration among team members and foster heightened understanding between providers and patients, we recommend creating accessible education for all staff levels.

One specific area of education we focused on was primary palliative care, which includes the core competencies of communication and symptom management recommended for generalists and specialists of all disciplines.²⁵ Program staff supported oncology fellows in developing their primary palliative care skills by being available to discuss basic symptom management and communication issues. VA cancer care programs could benefit from ongoing palliative care education of oncology staff to facilitate primary palliative care as well as earlier integration of secondary palliative care when needed.²⁶ Secondary palliative care or care provided directly by the palliative care team assists with complex symptom management or communication issues. For these needs, oncology fellows were encouraged to refer to either the palliative care staff available in one of the half-day clinics or to the outpatient palliative care clinic. As a unique strength, the VA allows veterans to receive concurrent cancer-directed therapy and hospice care, which enables earlier referrals to hospice care and higher quality end-of-life care and emphasizes the need for primary palliative care in oncology.^27,28

Integrating supportive oncology team members, such as licensed clinical social worker and psychology interns, was successful. This was modeled on the VA PACT, which focuses on prevention, health promotion, coordination and chronic disease management.²⁹ Social determinants of health have a major impact on health outcomes especially in veteran-specific and African American populations, making screening for distress critical.^30-32 The VA Office of Health Equity actively addresses health inequities by supporting initiation of screening programs for social determinants of health, including education, employment, exposure to abuse and violence, food insecurity, housing instability, legal needs, social isolation, transportation needs, and utility needs. This is especially needed for African-American individuals who are not only more likely to experience cancer, but also more likely to be negatively impacted by the consequences of cancer diagnosis/treatment, such as complications related to one’s job security, access to care, adverse effects, and other highly distressing needs.^33,34

Our program found that veterans with cancer often had concerns associated with food and housing insecurity, transportation and paying for medication or medical care, and screening allowed health care providers to detect and address these social determinants of health through referrals to VA and community-specific programs. Social workers integrated into VA cancer clinics are uniquely equipped to coordinate distress screening and support continuity of care by virtue of their training, connections to preexisting VA supportive services, and knowledge of community resources. This model could be used in other VA specialty clinics serving veterans with chronic illness and those with high levels of physical frailty.³⁵

Our ability to roll out distress screening was scaffolded by technological integration into existing VA systems (eg, screening results in CPRS and electronic referrals). Screening procedures could have been even more efficient with improved technology (Table 3). For example, technological limitations made it challenging to easily identify patients due for screening, requiring a cumbersome process of tracking, collecting and entering patients’ paper forms. Health care providers seeking to develop a distress screening program should consider investing in technology that allows for identification of patients requiring screening at a predetermined interval, completion of screening via tablet or personal device, integration of screening responses into the electronic health record, and automatic generation of notifications to the treating physician and appropriate support services.

Conclusions

Veterans with cancer benefited from enhanced screening and psychosocial service availability, similar to a PCMHI model. Robust screening programs helped advocate for veterans dealing with the effects of poverty through identification of need and referral to existing VA programs and services quickly and efficiently. Providing comprehensive care within ambulatory cancer clinics can address cancer-related distress and any potential barriers to care in real time. VA hospitals typically offer an array of supportive services to address veterans’ psychosocial needs, yet these services tend to be siloed. Integrated referrals can help to resolve such access barriers. Since many veterans with burdensome cancers are not able to see their VA primary care physician regularly, offering comprehensive care within medical oncology ensures complete and integrated care that includes psychosocial screening.

We believe that this program is an example of a mechanism for oncologists and palliative care clinicians to integrate their care in a way that identifies needs and triages services for vulnerable veterans. As colleagues have written, “it is fundamental to our commitment to veterans that we ensure comparable, high quality care regardless of a veteran’s gender, race, or where they live.^”34 Health care providers may underestimate the extensive change a cancer diagnosis can have on a patient’s quality of life. Cancer diagnosis and treatment have a large impact on all individuals, but this impact may be greater for individuals in poverty due to inability to work from home, inflexible work hours, and limited support structures. By creating screening programs with psychosocial integration in oncology clinics such as we have described, we hope to improve access to more equitable care for vulnerable veterans.

Readers may recall that at the end of each calendar as opposed to fiscal year—I know it is hard to believe time exists outside the Federal system—Federal Practitioner publishes my ethics-focused version of the familiar year-end roundup. This year I am reversing the typical order of most annual rankings by putting the worst first for 2 morally salient reasons.

The first is that, sadly, it is almost always easier to identify multiple incidents that compete ignominiously for the “worst” of federal health care. Even more disappointing, it is comparatively difficult to find stories for the “best” that are of the same scale and scope as the bad news. This is not to say that every day there are not individual narratives of courage and compassion reported in US Department of Defense, US Public Health Service, and US Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), and hundreds more unsung heroes.

The second reason is that as human beings our psychology is such that we gravitate toward the worst things more powerfully and persistently than we do the best. This is in part why it is more difficult to find uplifting stories and why the demoralizing ones affect us so strongly. In an exhaustive review of the subject, psychologists Roy Baumeister and colleagues conclude that,

When equal measures of good and bad are present, however, the psychological effects of bad ones outweigh those of the good ones. This may in fact be a general principle or law of psychological phenomena, possibly reflecting the innate predispositions of the psyche or at least reflecting the almost inevitable adaptation of each individual to the exigencies of daily life.²

I am thus saving the best for last in the hope that it will be more memorable and impactful than the worst.

Unique to this year’s look-back, both the negative and the positive accounts come from the domain of end-of-life care. And unlike prior reviews where the lack of administrative vigilance and professional competence affected hundreds of patients, families, and staff, each of this year’s incidents involve a single patient.

An incident that occurred in September 2019 at a VA Community Living Center (CLC) in Georgia stood out in infamy apart from all others. It was the report of a veteran in a VA nursing home who had been bitten more than 100 times by ants crawling all over his room. He died shortly afterward. In a scene out of a horror movie tapping into the most primeval human fears, his daughter Laquana Ross described her father, a Vietnam Air Force veteran with cancer, to media and VA officials in graphic terms. “I understand mistakes happen,” she said. “I’ve had ants. But he was bit by ants two days in a row. They feasted on him.”³

In this new era of holding its senior executive service accountable, the outraged chair of the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee demanded that heads roll, and the VA acted rapidly to comply.⁴ The VA Central Office placed the network director on administrative leave, reassigned the chief medical officer, and initiated quality and safety reviews as well as an administrative investigative board to scrutinize how the parent Atlanta VA medical center managed the situation. In total, 9 officials connected to the incident were placed on leave. The VA apologized, with VA Secretary Robert Wilke zeroing in on the core values involved in the tragedy, “This is about basic humanity and dignity,” he said. “I don’t care what steps were taken to address the issues. We did not treat a vet with the dignity that he and his family deserved.”⁵ Yet it was the veteran’s daughter, with unbelievable charity, who asked the most crucial question that must be answered within the framework of a just culture if similar tragedies are not to occur in the future, “I know the staff, without a shadow of doubt, respected my dad and even loved him,” Ross said. “But what’s their ability to assess situations and fix things?”³

To begin to give Ms. Ross the answer she deserves, we must understand that the antithesis of love is not hate but indifference; of compassion, it is not cruelty but coldness. A true just culture reserves individual blame for those who have ill-will and adopts a systems perspective of organizational improvement toward most other types of errors.⁶ This means that the deplorable conditions in the CLC cannot be charged to the failure of a single staff member to fulfil their obligations but to collective collapse at many levels of the organization. Just culture is ethically laudable and far superior to the history in federal service of capricious punishment or institutional apathy that far too often were the default reactions to media exposures or congressional ire. Justice, though necessary, is not sufficient to achieve virtue. Those who work in health care also must be inspired to offer mercy, kindness, and compassion, especially in our most sacred privilege to provide care of the dying.

The best of 2019 illustrates this distinction movingly. This account also involves a Vietnam veteran, this time a Marine also dying of cancer, which happened just about a month after the earlier report. To be transparent it occurred at my home VA medical center in New Mexico. I was peripherally involved in the case as a consultant but had no role in the wondrous things that transpired. The last wish of a patient dying in the hospice unit on campus was to see his beloved dog who had been taken to the local city animal shelter when he was hospitalized because he had no friends or family to look after the companion animal. A social worker on the palliative care team called the animal shelter and explained the patient did not have much time left but wanted to see his dog before he died. Working together with support from facility leadership, shelter workers brought the dog to visit with the patient for an entire day while hospice staff cried with joy and sadness.⁷

As the epigraph for this editorial from Dame Cicely Saunders, the founder of the modern hospice movement, says, the difference between unspeakable pain and meaningful suffering can be measured in the depth of compassion caregivers show to the dying. It is this quality of mercy that in one case condemns, and in the other praises, us all as health care and administrative professionals in the service of our country. Baumeister and colleagues suggest that the human tendency to magnify the bad and minimize the good in everyday myopia may in a wider vision actually be a reason for hope:

It may be that humans and animals show heightened awareness of and responded more quickly to negative information because it signals a need for change. Hence, the adaptiveness of self-regulation partly lies in the organism’s ability to detect when response modifications are necessary and when they are unnecessary. Moreover, the lessons learned from bad events should ideally be retained permanently so that the same dangers or costs are not encountered repeatedly. Meanwhile, good events (such as those that provide a feeling of satisfaction and contentment) should ideally wear off so that the organism is motivated to continue searching for more and better outcomes.²

Let us all take this lesson into our work in 2020 so that when it comes time to write this column next year in the chilling cold of late autumn there will be more stories of light than darkness from which to choose.

Readers may recall that at the end of each calendar as opposed to fiscal year—I know it is hard to believe time exists outside the Federal system—Federal Practitioner publishes my ethics-focused version of the familiar year-end roundup. This year I am reversing the typical order of most annual rankings by putting the worst first for 2 morally salient reasons.

The first is that, sadly, it is almost always easier to identify multiple incidents that compete ignominiously for the “worst” of federal health care. Even more disappointing, it is comparatively difficult to find stories for the “best” that are of the same scale and scope as the bad news. This is not to say that every day there are not individual narratives of courage and compassion reported in US Department of Defense, US Public Health Service, and US Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), and hundreds more unsung heroes.

The second reason is that as human beings our psychology is such that we gravitate toward the worst things more powerfully and persistently than we do the best. This is in part why it is more difficult to find uplifting stories and why the demoralizing ones affect us so strongly. In an exhaustive review of the subject, psychologists Roy Baumeister and colleagues conclude that,

When equal measures of good and bad are present, however, the psychological effects of bad ones outweigh those of the good ones. This may in fact be a general principle or law of psychological phenomena, possibly reflecting the innate predispositions of the psyche or at least reflecting the almost inevitable adaptation of each individual to the exigencies of daily life.²

I am thus saving the best for last in the hope that it will be more memorable and impactful than the worst.

Unique to this year’s look-back, both the negative and the positive accounts come from the domain of end-of-life care. And unlike prior reviews where the lack of administrative vigilance and professional competence affected hundreds of patients, families, and staff, each of this year’s incidents involve a single patient.

An incident that occurred in September 2019 at a VA Community Living Center (CLC) in Georgia stood out in infamy apart from all others. It was the report of a veteran in a VA nursing home who had been bitten more than 100 times by ants crawling all over his room. He died shortly afterward. In a scene out of a horror movie tapping into the most primeval human fears, his daughter Laquana Ross described her father, a Vietnam Air Force veteran with cancer, to media and VA officials in graphic terms. “I understand mistakes happen,” she said. “I’ve had ants. But he was bit by ants two days in a row. They feasted on him.”³

In this new era of holding its senior executive service accountable, the outraged chair of the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee demanded that heads roll, and the VA acted rapidly to comply.⁴ The VA Central Office placed the network director on administrative leave, reassigned the chief medical officer, and initiated quality and safety reviews as well as an administrative investigative board to scrutinize how the parent Atlanta VA medical center managed the situation. In total, 9 officials connected to the incident were placed on leave. The VA apologized, with VA Secretary Robert Wilke zeroing in on the core values involved in the tragedy, “This is about basic humanity and dignity,” he said. “I don’t care what steps were taken to address the issues. We did not treat a vet with the dignity that he and his family deserved.”⁵ Yet it was the veteran’s daughter, with unbelievable charity, who asked the most crucial question that must be answered within the framework of a just culture if similar tragedies are not to occur in the future, “I know the staff, without a shadow of doubt, respected my dad and even loved him,” Ross said. “But what’s their ability to assess situations and fix things?”³

To begin to give Ms. Ross the answer she deserves, we must understand that the antithesis of love is not hate but indifference; of compassion, it is not cruelty but coldness. A true just culture reserves individual blame for those who have ill-will and adopts a systems perspective of organizational improvement toward most other types of errors.⁶ This means that the deplorable conditions in the CLC cannot be charged to the failure of a single staff member to fulfil their obligations but to collective collapse at many levels of the organization. Just culture is ethically laudable and far superior to the history in federal service of capricious punishment or institutional apathy that far too often were the default reactions to media exposures or congressional ire. Justice, though necessary, is not sufficient to achieve virtue. Those who work in health care also must be inspired to offer mercy, kindness, and compassion, especially in our most sacred privilege to provide care of the dying.

The best of 2019 illustrates this distinction movingly. This account also involves a Vietnam veteran, this time a Marine also dying of cancer, which happened just about a month after the earlier report. To be transparent it occurred at my home VA medical center in New Mexico. I was peripherally involved in the case as a consultant but had no role in the wondrous things that transpired. The last wish of a patient dying in the hospice unit on campus was to see his beloved dog who had been taken to the local city animal shelter when he was hospitalized because he had no friends or family to look after the companion animal. A social worker on the palliative care team called the animal shelter and explained the patient did not have much time left but wanted to see his dog before he died. Working together with support from facility leadership, shelter workers brought the dog to visit with the patient for an entire day while hospice staff cried with joy and sadness.⁷

As the epigraph for this editorial from Dame Cicely Saunders, the founder of the modern hospice movement, says, the difference between unspeakable pain and meaningful suffering can be measured in the depth of compassion caregivers show to the dying. It is this quality of mercy that in one case condemns, and in the other praises, us all as health care and administrative professionals in the service of our country. Baumeister and colleagues suggest that the human tendency to magnify the bad and minimize the good in everyday myopia may in a wider vision actually be a reason for hope:

It may be that humans and animals show heightened awareness of and responded more quickly to negative information because it signals a need for change. Hence, the adaptiveness of self-regulation partly lies in the organism’s ability to detect when response modifications are necessary and when they are unnecessary. Moreover, the lessons learned from bad events should ideally be retained permanently so that the same dangers or costs are not encountered repeatedly. Meanwhile, good events (such as those that provide a feeling of satisfaction and contentment) should ideally wear off so that the organism is motivated to continue searching for more and better outcomes.²

Let us all take this lesson into our work in 2020 so that when it comes time to write this column next year in the chilling cold of late autumn there will be more stories of light than darkness from which to choose.

Readers may recall that at the end of each calendar as opposed to fiscal year—I know it is hard to believe time exists outside the Federal system—Federal Practitioner publishes my ethics-focused version of the familiar year-end roundup. This year I am reversing the typical order of most annual rankings by putting the worst first for 2 morally salient reasons.

The first is that, sadly, it is almost always easier to identify multiple incidents that compete ignominiously for the “worst” of federal health care. Even more disappointing, it is comparatively difficult to find stories for the “best” that are of the same scale and scope as the bad news. This is not to say that every day there are not individual narratives of courage and compassion reported in US Department of Defense, US Public Health Service, and US Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), and hundreds more unsung heroes.

The second reason is that as human beings our psychology is such that we gravitate toward the worst things more powerfully and persistently than we do the best. This is in part why it is more difficult to find uplifting stories and why the demoralizing ones affect us so strongly. In an exhaustive review of the subject, psychologists Roy Baumeister and colleagues conclude that,

When equal measures of good and bad are present, however, the psychological effects of bad ones outweigh those of the good ones. This may in fact be a general principle or law of psychological phenomena, possibly reflecting the innate predispositions of the psyche or at least reflecting the almost inevitable adaptation of each individual to the exigencies of daily life.²

I am thus saving the best for last in the hope that it will be more memorable and impactful than the worst.

Unique to this year’s look-back, both the negative and the positive accounts come from the domain of end-of-life care. And unlike prior reviews where the lack of administrative vigilance and professional competence affected hundreds of patients, families, and staff, each of this year’s incidents involve a single patient.

An incident that occurred in September 2019 at a VA Community Living Center (CLC) in Georgia stood out in infamy apart from all others. It was the report of a veteran in a VA nursing home who had been bitten more than 100 times by ants crawling all over his room. He died shortly afterward. In a scene out of a horror movie tapping into the most primeval human fears, his daughter Laquana Ross described her father, a Vietnam Air Force veteran with cancer, to media and VA officials in graphic terms. “I understand mistakes happen,” she said. “I’ve had ants. But he was bit by ants two days in a row. They feasted on him.”³

In this new era of holding its senior executive service accountable, the outraged chair of the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee demanded that heads roll, and the VA acted rapidly to comply.⁴ The VA Central Office placed the network director on administrative leave, reassigned the chief medical officer, and initiated quality and safety reviews as well as an administrative investigative board to scrutinize how the parent Atlanta VA medical center managed the situation. In total, 9 officials connected to the incident were placed on leave. The VA apologized, with VA Secretary Robert Wilke zeroing in on the core values involved in the tragedy, “This is about basic humanity and dignity,” he said. “I don’t care what steps were taken to address the issues. We did not treat a vet with the dignity that he and his family deserved.”⁵ Yet it was the veteran’s daughter, with unbelievable charity, who asked the most crucial question that must be answered within the framework of a just culture if similar tragedies are not to occur in the future, “I know the staff, without a shadow of doubt, respected my dad and even loved him,” Ross said. “But what’s their ability to assess situations and fix things?”³

To begin to give Ms. Ross the answer she deserves, we must understand that the antithesis of love is not hate but indifference; of compassion, it is not cruelty but coldness. A true just culture reserves individual blame for those who have ill-will and adopts a systems perspective of organizational improvement toward most other types of errors.⁶ This means that the deplorable conditions in the CLC cannot be charged to the failure of a single staff member to fulfil their obligations but to collective collapse at many levels of the organization. Just culture is ethically laudable and far superior to the history in federal service of capricious punishment or institutional apathy that far too often were the default reactions to media exposures or congressional ire. Justice, though necessary, is not sufficient to achieve virtue. Those who work in health care also must be inspired to offer mercy, kindness, and compassion, especially in our most sacred privilege to provide care of the dying.

The best of 2019 illustrates this distinction movingly. This account also involves a Vietnam veteran, this time a Marine also dying of cancer, which happened just about a month after the earlier report. To be transparent it occurred at my home VA medical center in New Mexico. I was peripherally involved in the case as a consultant but had no role in the wondrous things that transpired. The last wish of a patient dying in the hospice unit on campus was to see his beloved dog who had been taken to the local city animal shelter when he was hospitalized because he had no friends or family to look after the companion animal. A social worker on the palliative care team called the animal shelter and explained the patient did not have much time left but wanted to see his dog before he died. Working together with support from facility leadership, shelter workers brought the dog to visit with the patient for an entire day while hospice staff cried with joy and sadness.⁷

As the epigraph for this editorial from Dame Cicely Saunders, the founder of the modern hospice movement, says, the difference between unspeakable pain and meaningful suffering can be measured in the depth of compassion caregivers show to the dying. It is this quality of mercy that in one case condemns, and in the other praises, us all as health care and administrative professionals in the service of our country. Baumeister and colleagues suggest that the human tendency to magnify the bad and minimize the good in everyday myopia may in a wider vision actually be a reason for hope:

It may be that humans and animals show heightened awareness of and responded more quickly to negative information because it signals a need for change. Hence, the adaptiveness of self-regulation partly lies in the organism’s ability to detect when response modifications are necessary and when they are unnecessary. Moreover, the lessons learned from bad events should ideally be retained permanently so that the same dangers or costs are not encountered repeatedly. Meanwhile, good events (such as those that provide a feeling of satisfaction and contentment) should ideally wear off so that the organism is motivated to continue searching for more and better outcomes.²

Let us all take this lesson into our work in 2020 so that when it comes time to write this column next year in the chilling cold of late autumn there will be more stories of light than darkness from which to choose.

Dame Cicely Saunders, the founder of the modern hospice movement, gave me this advice early in my palliative medicine career: “Never stop thanking those who help you along.” There are many to thank and much to be thankful for since the palliative care series in ACS Surgery News commenced in September 2012. The series proposal was enthusiastically endorsed by the then Editor, Layton F. Rikkers, and promptly launched owing to the personal interest of the first series editor, Elizabeth Wood. Their strong advocacy continues with the current co-editors, Karen Deveney and Tyler Hughes and the ever-watchful eye and assistance of managing editor, Therese Borden.

The purpose of the series was to keep the concept of surgical palliative care visible to the Fellowship through the reflections of surgeons and surgeons in training, while commenting on timely issues relevant to palliative care. We were fortunate to be coupled with Peter Angelos’s astute, widely read series on ethics. Our respective areas of interest widely overlap and have come into sharper focus for the surgical community over roughly the same period of time.

It was my hope that our contributions on palliative care would emulate the qualities and quality of Dr. Angelos’s articles – commentaries that would be of interest to the entire spectrum of surgical specialties and venues of practice. While the ethics column focused on doing the right thing, we would be focused on how to do the right thing in our response to suffering. Thanks are due to ACS Surgery News for its consistent representation of the new specialty of surgical palliative care on a par with other surgical specialties. It is culturally significant that this advocacy included strong support from laypeople.

I have been gratified and am thankful for the frequent uplifting discussions and debates triggered by palliative care columns in well-thumbed copies of ACS Surgery News in our OR lounge.

I didn’t have to look far to find inspiration and direction for the advocacy of palliative care in surgical practice. My father, David D. Dunn, MD, FACS, who represented everything noble, humane, and sensible in surgery, was a community-based general surgeon practicing in an era when the “general surgeon” performed thoracic, vascular, trauma, pediatric, and plastic surgery in addition to abdominal surgery. He had extensive experience with responding to suffering in a fundamentally affirmative way. He founded the first hospice in our community to meet the needs of a proud, cantankerous, elderly man septic with a gangrenous leg who declined amputation. He also witnessed mass suffering when he commanded a field hospital tasked with the resuscitation of survivors of a liberated Nazi concentration camp. The experience could have easily destroyed him from the resulting cynicism about humanity or PTSD. But instead he claimed he learned the first step in responding to mass calamity is the resuscitation of hope. He recalled a rescued physician who was given a clean lab coat and a stethoscope even before he was given his first real meal in years. He believed the hallmarks of steadfastness and non-abandonment are the core of the surgical persona. Late in his long life that ended just before this series launched, he observed, “It’s all palliative when you get right down to it. You [meaning the next generation] have to figure out the details and do your bit.”

The future is bright to “figure out the details and do your bit” for surgeons interested in palliative care. A number of young surgeons and surgeons in training, some who have done fellowships and become ABS certified in Hospice and Palliative Medicine, have had the opportunity to be heard and their specialty field be recognized by the greater surgical community because of ACS Surgery News.

I once asked a physically and emotionally exhausted family member of an “ICU to nowhere” patient why he thought patients get “stuck” in the ICU. He answered eloquently, “People just don’t think they should die.” The prevailing biophysical and increasingly “corporate” framework for care of the seriously ill is handicapped by its inability to effectively respond to the psychological and spiritual questions raised by this comment. Inability of surgeons to reconcile personal moral imperatives with big data and corporate medicine may be contributing to burnout, one of the most frequently acknowledged problems for surgeons today. Disease management alone, even if completely evidence-based, will not break this type of gridlock nor leave patients, families, and practitioners with a lasting sense of support. We will always need a broader framework that gives us a lens through which we can see and a voice with which we can answer the serious concerns that trouble our seriously ill patients and their families. I thank ACS Surgery News for conscientiously providing us a lens and a voice over the past 7 years.

Dr. Dunn was formerly the medical director of the palliative care consultation service at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center Hamot in Erie, Pa., and Chair of the ACS Committee on Surgical Palliative Care.

Dame Cicely Saunders, the founder of the modern hospice movement, gave me this advice early in my palliative medicine career: “Never stop thanking those who help you along.” There are many to thank and much to be thankful for since the palliative care series in ACS Surgery News commenced in September 2012. The series proposal was enthusiastically endorsed by the then Editor, Layton F. Rikkers, and promptly launched owing to the personal interest of the first series editor, Elizabeth Wood. Their strong advocacy continues with the current co-editors, Karen Deveney and Tyler Hughes and the ever-watchful eye and assistance of managing editor, Therese Borden.

The purpose of the series was to keep the concept of surgical palliative care visible to the Fellowship through the reflections of surgeons and surgeons in training, while commenting on timely issues relevant to palliative care. We were fortunate to be coupled with Peter Angelos’s astute, widely read series on ethics. Our respective areas of interest widely overlap and have come into sharper focus for the surgical community over roughly the same period of time.

It was my hope that our contributions on palliative care would emulate the qualities and quality of Dr. Angelos’s articles – commentaries that would be of interest to the entire spectrum of surgical specialties and venues of practice. While the ethics column focused on doing the right thing, we would be focused on how to do the right thing in our response to suffering. Thanks are due to ACS Surgery News for its consistent representation of the new specialty of surgical palliative care on a par with other surgical specialties. It is culturally significant that this advocacy included strong support from laypeople.

I have been gratified and am thankful for the frequent uplifting discussions and debates triggered by palliative care columns in well-thumbed copies of ACS Surgery News in our OR lounge.

I didn’t have to look far to find inspiration and direction for the advocacy of palliative care in surgical practice. My father, David D. Dunn, MD, FACS, who represented everything noble, humane, and sensible in surgery, was a community-based general surgeon practicing in an era when the “general surgeon” performed thoracic, vascular, trauma, pediatric, and plastic surgery in addition to abdominal surgery. He had extensive experience with responding to suffering in a fundamentally affirmative way. He founded the first hospice in our community to meet the needs of a proud, cantankerous, elderly man septic with a gangrenous leg who declined amputation. He also witnessed mass suffering when he commanded a field hospital tasked with the resuscitation of survivors of a liberated Nazi concentration camp. The experience could have easily destroyed him from the resulting cynicism about humanity or PTSD. But instead he claimed he learned the first step in responding to mass calamity is the resuscitation of hope. He recalled a rescued physician who was given a clean lab coat and a stethoscope even before he was given his first real meal in years. He believed the hallmarks of steadfastness and non-abandonment are the core of the surgical persona. Late in his long life that ended just before this series launched, he observed, “It’s all palliative when you get right down to it. You [meaning the next generation] have to figure out the details and do your bit.”

The future is bright to “figure out the details and do your bit” for surgeons interested in palliative care. A number of young surgeons and surgeons in training, some who have done fellowships and become ABS certified in Hospice and Palliative Medicine, have had the opportunity to be heard and their specialty field be recognized by the greater surgical community because of ACS Surgery News.

I once asked a physically and emotionally exhausted family member of an “ICU to nowhere” patient why he thought patients get “stuck” in the ICU. He answered eloquently, “People just don’t think they should die.” The prevailing biophysical and increasingly “corporate” framework for care of the seriously ill is handicapped by its inability to effectively respond to the psychological and spiritual questions raised by this comment. Inability of surgeons to reconcile personal moral imperatives with big data and corporate medicine may be contributing to burnout, one of the most frequently acknowledged problems for surgeons today. Disease management alone, even if completely evidence-based, will not break this type of gridlock nor leave patients, families, and practitioners with a lasting sense of support. We will always need a broader framework that gives us a lens through which we can see and a voice with which we can answer the serious concerns that trouble our seriously ill patients and their families. I thank ACS Surgery News for conscientiously providing us a lens and a voice over the past 7 years.

Dr. Dunn was formerly the medical director of the palliative care consultation service at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center Hamot in Erie, Pa., and Chair of the ACS Committee on Surgical Palliative Care.

Dame Cicely Saunders, the founder of the modern hospice movement, gave me this advice early in my palliative medicine career: “Never stop thanking those who help you along.” There are many to thank and much to be thankful for since the palliative care series in ACS Surgery News commenced in September 2012. The series proposal was enthusiastically endorsed by the then Editor, Layton F. Rikkers, and promptly launched owing to the personal interest of the first series editor, Elizabeth Wood. Their strong advocacy continues with the current co-editors, Karen Deveney and Tyler Hughes and the ever-watchful eye and assistance of managing editor, Therese Borden.

The purpose of the series was to keep the concept of surgical palliative care visible to the Fellowship through the reflections of surgeons and surgeons in training, while commenting on timely issues relevant to palliative care. We were fortunate to be coupled with Peter Angelos’s astute, widely read series on ethics. Our respective areas of interest widely overlap and have come into sharper focus for the surgical community over roughly the same period of time.

It was my hope that our contributions on palliative care would emulate the qualities and quality of Dr. Angelos’s articles – commentaries that would be of interest to the entire spectrum of surgical specialties and venues of practice. While the ethics column focused on doing the right thing, we would be focused on how to do the right thing in our response to suffering. Thanks are due to ACS Surgery News for its consistent representation of the new specialty of surgical palliative care on a par with other surgical specialties. It is culturally significant that this advocacy included strong support from laypeople.

I have been gratified and am thankful for the frequent uplifting discussions and debates triggered by palliative care columns in well-thumbed copies of ACS Surgery News in our OR lounge.

I didn’t have to look far to find inspiration and direction for the advocacy of palliative care in surgical practice. My father, David D. Dunn, MD, FACS, who represented everything noble, humane, and sensible in surgery, was a community-based general surgeon practicing in an era when the “general surgeon” performed thoracic, vascular, trauma, pediatric, and plastic surgery in addition to abdominal surgery. He had extensive experience with responding to suffering in a fundamentally affirmative way. He founded the first hospice in our community to meet the needs of a proud, cantankerous, elderly man septic with a gangrenous leg who declined amputation. He also witnessed mass suffering when he commanded a field hospital tasked with the resuscitation of survivors of a liberated Nazi concentration camp. The experience could have easily destroyed him from the resulting cynicism about humanity or PTSD. But instead he claimed he learned the first step in responding to mass calamity is the resuscitation of hope. He recalled a rescued physician who was given a clean lab coat and a stethoscope even before he was given his first real meal in years. He believed the hallmarks of steadfastness and non-abandonment are the core of the surgical persona. Late in his long life that ended just before this series launched, he observed, “It’s all palliative when you get right down to it. You [meaning the next generation] have to figure out the details and do your bit.”

The future is bright to “figure out the details and do your bit” for surgeons interested in palliative care. A number of young surgeons and surgeons in training, some who have done fellowships and become ABS certified in Hospice and Palliative Medicine, have had the opportunity to be heard and their specialty field be recognized by the greater surgical community because of ACS Surgery News.

I once asked a physically and emotionally exhausted family member of an “ICU to nowhere” patient why he thought patients get “stuck” in the ICU. He answered eloquently, “People just don’t think they should die.” The prevailing biophysical and increasingly “corporate” framework for care of the seriously ill is handicapped by its inability to effectively respond to the psychological and spiritual questions raised by this comment. Inability of surgeons to reconcile personal moral imperatives with big data and corporate medicine may be contributing to burnout, one of the most frequently acknowledged problems for surgeons today. Disease management alone, even if completely evidence-based, will not break this type of gridlock nor leave patients, families, and practitioners with a lasting sense of support. We will always need a broader framework that gives us a lens through which we can see and a voice with which we can answer the serious concerns that trouble our seriously ill patients and their families. I thank ACS Surgery News for conscientiously providing us a lens and a voice over the past 7 years.

Dr. Dunn was formerly the medical director of the palliative care consultation service at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center Hamot in Erie, Pa., and Chair of the ACS Committee on Surgical Palliative Care.

It was a banner year in 1998 for the moral and ethical evolution of the College. That year saw the release of its Statement of Principles of End-of-Life Care, a seminal document for the emerging framework of surgical palliative care and the first light of the work of my colleague, Peter Angelos, MD, FACS, which did much to make made ethics a less arcane element of surgical practice. These developments followed the 1997 Clinical Congress during which the College joined the then-active national debate about physician-assisted suicide.

The national debate eventually culminated with the U.S. Supreme Court’s two 1997 rulings that physician-assisted suicide is not a protected liberty interest under the Constitution. These rulings in Vacco v. Quill and Washington v. Glucksberg deferred to the states the legalization of physician-assisted suicide.

Kill the suffering, not the patient

It was ironic that the College’s attention to surgical palliative care started, literally, with a dead end. The 1997 symposium’s focus on physician-assisted suicide revealed how little there was in the surgeon’s toolbox to assist seriously ill patients and their families. At this well-attended event with a distinguished panel of surgeons and ethicists moderated by the late Thomas Krizek, MD, FACS, I heard fear of death, fear of suffering, and fear of our helplessness as practitioners in the face of our patients’ deaths. The debate was about control, not the effective response to the many species of suffering encountered in surgical practice.

Hospice care and the nascent concept of palliative care were acknowledged by both sides of the debate as beneficial but as distinctly apart from surgery. The need for improved palliative care was the one unifying idea that emerged from that day’s discussion. All sides seemed to agree that striving to mitigate suffering during the course of any serious illness would be preferable to allowing it to continue unabated until silencing it with deliberate death as a last resort. The ensuing challenge for surgeons would be the reconciliation of cure and palliation, each so much a part of surgical history, especially in the past 200 years. This would prove to be a tall order as surgeons had done such a tidy job separating these two priorities without even realizing it since the second World War. Nothing less than the soul of surgery (and medicine) would be at stake from the relentless technocratic “progress” that threatened to swallow health care and so many other aspects of our culture – a culture that perhaps has been too intoxicated by the individual “pursuit of life, liberty, and happiness” while overlooking the suffering of one’s neighbor.

Recent evidence of burnout raises the possibility that we surgeons have internalized this conflict. Because of our sacred fellowship in healing, are we now, as we were 20 years ago, in the midst of a new spiritual crisis? As the operative repertoire and our professional status become increasingly transient we will be compelled to ground our identities in something more fulfilling and enduring.

Hope in fellowship

Now, as in 1998, there is hope. Hope lies in our fellowship. The focus of palliative care as understood by surgeons has broadened considerably, encouraged by the gradual public acceptance of palliative approaches to care extending beyond hospice care and the generally favorable experiences surgeons have had with palliative care teams, some of which have been directed by surgeons. There are now dozens of surgeons currently certified in Hospice and Palliative Medicine by the American Board of Surgery who are much more skilled in palliative care than anyone practicing in 1998. The ABS’s decision (2006) to offer certification in Hospice and Palliative Medicine was, in itself, an indication of how far things had progressed since 1998.

Several challenges to contemporary surgery will benefit from the growing reservoir of palliative care expertise such as enhanced communication skill, opioid management, and burnout. The concept of shared decision making is only one example. The multidimensional understanding of suffering, a cardinal principle of palliative philosophy, could transform the current dilemma of “What do we do about opioids?” to the scientific and social research question, “What should be done with opioid receptors and countless other receptors that shape the pain experience?” And lastly, the current postgraduate educational focus on communication and burnout indicate a readiness for introspection and fellowship by surgeons, a necessary prerequisite in meeting any existential or spiritual challenge to our art.

We have come a long way in 20 years but there are still miles to go before we sleep.

Dr. Dunn was formerly the medical director of the palliative care consultation service at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center Hamot in Erie, Pa., and Chair of the ACS Committee on Surgical Palliative Care.

It was a banner year in 1998 for the moral and ethical evolution of the College. That year saw the release of its Statement of Principles of End-of-Life Care, a seminal document for the emerging framework of surgical palliative care and the first light of the work of my colleague, Peter Angelos, MD, FACS, which did much to make made ethics a less arcane element of surgical practice. These developments followed the 1997 Clinical Congress during which the College joined the then-active national debate about physician-assisted suicide.

The national debate eventually culminated with the U.S. Supreme Court’s two 1997 rulings that physician-assisted suicide is not a protected liberty interest under the Constitution. These rulings in Vacco v. Quill and Washington v. Glucksberg deferred to the states the legalization of physician-assisted suicide.

Kill the suffering, not the patient

It was ironic that the College’s attention to surgical palliative care started, literally, with a dead end. The 1997 symposium’s focus on physician-assisted suicide revealed how little there was in the surgeon’s toolbox to assist seriously ill patients and their families. At this well-attended event with a distinguished panel of surgeons and ethicists moderated by the late Thomas Krizek, MD, FACS, I heard fear of death, fear of suffering, and fear of our helplessness as practitioners in the face of our patients’ deaths. The debate was about control, not the effective response to the many species of suffering encountered in surgical practice.

Hospice care and the nascent concept of palliative care were acknowledged by both sides of the debate as beneficial but as distinctly apart from surgery. The need for improved palliative care was the one unifying idea that emerged from that day’s discussion. All sides seemed to agree that striving to mitigate suffering during the course of any serious illness would be preferable to allowing it to continue unabated until silencing it with deliberate death as a last resort. The ensuing challenge for surgeons would be the reconciliation of cure and palliation, each so much a part of surgical history, especially in the past 200 years. This would prove to be a tall order as surgeons had done such a tidy job separating these two priorities without even realizing it since the second World War. Nothing less than the soul of surgery (and medicine) would be at stake from the relentless technocratic “progress” that threatened to swallow health care and so many other aspects of our culture – a culture that perhaps has been too intoxicated by the individual “pursuit of life, liberty, and happiness” while overlooking the suffering of one’s neighbor.

Recent evidence of burnout raises the possibility that we surgeons have internalized this conflict. Because of our sacred fellowship in healing, are we now, as we were 20 years ago, in the midst of a new spiritual crisis? As the operative repertoire and our professional status become increasingly transient we will be compelled to ground our identities in something more fulfilling and enduring.

Hope in fellowship

Now, as in 1998, there is hope. Hope lies in our fellowship. The focus of palliative care as understood by surgeons has broadened considerably, encouraged by the gradual public acceptance of palliative approaches to care extending beyond hospice care and the generally favorable experiences surgeons have had with palliative care teams, some of which have been directed by surgeons. There are now dozens of surgeons currently certified in Hospice and Palliative Medicine by the American Board of Surgery who are much more skilled in palliative care than anyone practicing in 1998. The ABS’s decision (2006) to offer certification in Hospice and Palliative Medicine was, in itself, an indication of how far things had progressed since 1998.

Several challenges to contemporary surgery will benefit from the growing reservoir of palliative care expertise such as enhanced communication skill, opioid management, and burnout. The concept of shared decision making is only one example. The multidimensional understanding of suffering, a cardinal principle of palliative philosophy, could transform the current dilemma of “What do we do about opioids?” to the scientific and social research question, “What should be done with opioid receptors and countless other receptors that shape the pain experience?” And lastly, the current postgraduate educational focus on communication and burnout indicate a readiness for introspection and fellowship by surgeons, a necessary prerequisite in meeting any existential or spiritual challenge to our art.

We have come a long way in 20 years but there are still miles to go before we sleep.

Dr. Dunn was formerly the medical director of the palliative care consultation service at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center Hamot in Erie, Pa., and Chair of the ACS Committee on Surgical Palliative Care.

It was a banner year in 1998 for the moral and ethical evolution of the College. That year saw the release of its Statement of Principles of End-of-Life Care, a seminal document for the emerging framework of surgical palliative care and the first light of the work of my colleague, Peter Angelos, MD, FACS, which did much to make made ethics a less arcane element of surgical practice. These developments followed the 1997 Clinical Congress during which the College joined the then-active national debate about physician-assisted suicide.

The national debate eventually culminated with the U.S. Supreme Court’s two 1997 rulings that physician-assisted suicide is not a protected liberty interest under the Constitution. These rulings in Vacco v. Quill and Washington v. Glucksberg deferred to the states the legalization of physician-assisted suicide.

Kill the suffering, not the patient

It was ironic that the College’s attention to surgical palliative care started, literally, with a dead end. The 1997 symposium’s focus on physician-assisted suicide revealed how little there was in the surgeon’s toolbox to assist seriously ill patients and their families. At this well-attended event with a distinguished panel of surgeons and ethicists moderated by the late Thomas Krizek, MD, FACS, I heard fear of death, fear of suffering, and fear of our helplessness as practitioners in the face of our patients’ deaths. The debate was about control, not the effective response to the many species of suffering encountered in surgical practice.

Hospice care and the nascent concept of palliative care were acknowledged by both sides of the debate as beneficial but as distinctly apart from surgery. The need for improved palliative care was the one unifying idea that emerged from that day’s discussion. All sides seemed to agree that striving to mitigate suffering during the course of any serious illness would be preferable to allowing it to continue unabated until silencing it with deliberate death as a last resort. The ensuing challenge for surgeons would be the reconciliation of cure and palliation, each so much a part of surgical history, especially in the past 200 years. This would prove to be a tall order as surgeons had done such a tidy job separating these two priorities without even realizing it since the second World War. Nothing less than the soul of surgery (and medicine) would be at stake from the relentless technocratic “progress” that threatened to swallow health care and so many other aspects of our culture – a culture that perhaps has been too intoxicated by the individual “pursuit of life, liberty, and happiness” while overlooking the suffering of one’s neighbor.

Recent evidence of burnout raises the possibility that we surgeons have internalized this conflict. Because of our sacred fellowship in healing, are we now, as we were 20 years ago, in the midst of a new spiritual crisis? As the operative repertoire and our professional status become increasingly transient we will be compelled to ground our identities in something more fulfilling and enduring.

Hope in fellowship

Now, as in 1998, there is hope. Hope lies in our fellowship. The focus of palliative care as understood by surgeons has broadened considerably, encouraged by the gradual public acceptance of palliative approaches to care extending beyond hospice care and the generally favorable experiences surgeons have had with palliative care teams, some of which have been directed by surgeons. There are now dozens of surgeons currently certified in Hospice and Palliative Medicine by the American Board of Surgery who are much more skilled in palliative care than anyone practicing in 1998. The ABS’s decision (2006) to offer certification in Hospice and Palliative Medicine was, in itself, an indication of how far things had progressed since 1998.

Several challenges to contemporary surgery will benefit from the growing reservoir of palliative care expertise such as enhanced communication skill, opioid management, and burnout. The concept of shared decision making is only one example. The multidimensional understanding of suffering, a cardinal principle of palliative philosophy, could transform the current dilemma of “What do we do about opioids?” to the scientific and social research question, “What should be done with opioid receptors and countless other receptors that shape the pain experience?” And lastly, the current postgraduate educational focus on communication and burnout indicate a readiness for introspection and fellowship by surgeons, a necessary prerequisite in meeting any existential or spiritual challenge to our art.

We have come a long way in 20 years but there are still miles to go before we sleep.

Dr. Dunn was formerly the medical director of the palliative care consultation service at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center Hamot in Erie, Pa., and Chair of the ACS Committee on Surgical Palliative Care.

About Research in Context

In this article, the authors of recent scholarship have been asked to discuss the implications of their research on federal health care providers and specifically the veteran and active-duty service member patient populations. Because the article does not include new research and cannot be blinded, it has undergone an abbreviated peer review process. The original article can be found at Sullivan DR, Forsberg CW, Ganzini L, et al. Longitudinal changes in depression symptoms and survival among patients with lung cancer: a national cohort assessment. J Clin Oncol. 2016;34(33):3984-3991.

Although depression is common among patients with cancer, patients with lung cancer are at particularly high risk. The prevalence of major depressive disorder (MDD) among patients with cancer can be as high as 13%, whereas up to 44% of patients with lung cancer experience depression symptoms at some point following their cancer diagnosis.^1-3 These estimates are consistently higher than those of other types of cancer, possibly related to the stigma of the disease and the associated morbidity and mortality that are its hallmarks.^4-8 This potentially life-threatening cancer diagnosis often evokes psychological distress; however, additional stressors contribute to the development of depression, including the effects of chemotherapeutic agents, surgical procedures, radiotherapy, and the consequences of physical symptoms and paraneoplastic syndromes.

In addition to the crippling effects of comorbid depression on patients’ quality of life (QOL), severe and persistent depression among patients with cancer is associated with prolonged hospital stays, worse treatment adherence, physical distress and pain, and increased desire for hastened death.^9-11 During treatment, depression can amplify physical symptoms and interfere with effective coping.^12,13

Depression also is likely a significant factor for the risk of suicide, which is 4 times higher in patients with lung cancer than that of the general population.¹⁴ Most important, as our recent study demonstrated, depression that develops at cancer diagnosis or during cancer treatment may contribute to worse survival. This effect was strongest among patients with early stage disease, in other words, the patients who are most likely to achieve cure.³ This association with early stage disease also has been observed in a strictly veteran population from the northwest U.S.¹⁵

Another key finding of our study was the similar survival among patients who experienced a remission of their depression and those who were never depressed. This finding reinforces the importance of effective depression treatment, which has the potential to reduce depression-related mortality; however, depression treatment was not fully captured and could not be directly compared in our study. Unfortunately, comorbid depression often goes undiagnosed and untreated in cancer patients as they report unmet emotional needs and a desire for psychological support during and after completion of cancer treatment.^16,17

Given the general lack of depression treatment that occurs in patients with cancer, the negative consequences of depression can be sustained well into survivorship—defined clinically as someone who is free of any sign of cancer for 5 years. Cancer survivors frequently report fatigue, mood disturbance, sleep disruption, pain, and cognitive limitations that significantly impact QOL and are associated with disability and increased health care use.¹⁸ These symptoms likely are intertwined with and contribute to the development and persistence of depression. The ramifications of untreated depression on long-term cancer survivor outcomes are not completely understood, as few high-quality studies of depression in cancer survivors exist. However, in a mixed group of patients with cancer, there was a 2-fold risk of mortality in survivors with depression symptoms when these patients were assessed from 1 to 10 years into survivorship.¹⁹ The impact of depression on cancer survivorship is an important aspect of cancer care that deserves significantly more attention from both a research and clinical perspective.

Special Considerations for Veterans

There is a higher prevalence of mental health diagnoses in veterans than that in the general population, and depressive disorders are the most common.^20-22 According to the VA National Registry for Depression, 11% of veterans aged ≥ 65 years have a diagnosis of MDD, a rate more than twice that in the general population of a similar age.²³ However, the actual rate of depression among veterans may be even higher, as studies suggest depression is underdiagnosed in the veteran population.²⁴ In addition to depression, veterans experience other disabling psychological illnesses, such as posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) related to deployment and combat duty or combat-related injuries, such as traumatic brain injuries. The negative consequences of PTSD on cancer outcomes are largely unexplored, but PTSD can contribute to increased health care utilization and costs.^25,26 A similar psychological construct, cancer-related posttraumatic stress (PTS), which develops as a result of a cancer diagnosis or treatment, is associated with missed medical appointments and procedures, which could impact survival.²⁷

Depression Screening and Treatment

Given the negative consequences of comorbid mental illness, professional oncology societies have started developing guidelines regarding the assessments and care of patients with cancer who are experiencing symptoms of depression and/or anxiety.^11,28,29 Among these, the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) has adapted the Pan-Canadian Practice Guideline on Screening, Assessment, and Care of Psychosocial Distress (Depression, Anxiety) in Adults With Cancer.²⁸ Per ASCO, the target audience for these guidelines is health care providers (eg, medical, surgical, and radiation oncologists; psychiatrists; psychologists; primary care providers; nurses; and others involved in the delivery of care for adults with cancer) as well as patients with cancer and their family members and caregivers.²⁸ These guidelines address the optimum screening, assessment, and psychosocial-supportive care interventions for adults with cancer who are identified as experiencing symptoms of depression. Among the most imperative recommendations are periodic assessments across the trajectory of cancer care, including after cure, as well as employing institutional and community resources for depression treatment.

In clinical practice in a VA setting, implementing these guidelines might involve various interventions. First, it is vital for providers to conduct depression screening during periodic health care encounters. Given the high prevalence of depression in patients with lung cancer, we suggest using the 9-item Patient Health Questionnaire (PHQ-9) as an initial screening tool.³⁰ Unlike the abridged 2-item PHQ-2 commonly used in the VA, the PHQ-9 provides an assessment of the full range of depressive symptoms. An elevated PHQ-9 score (≥ 10) is consistent with a major depressive episode and should trigger next steps.³⁰

Once clinically significant depression is identified, initiation of treatment should occur next. The VA is well suited to assist and support non-mental health clinicians—particularly primary care—in treatment initiation and monitoring. This model of partnership is frequently called collaborative care, or integrated care, and it is well positioned to help patients with lung cancer with concomitant depression. In the VA, this model of care is called primary care-mental healthintegration (PC-MHI). One PC-MHI resource is called TIDES (Translating Initiatives for Depression into Effective Solutions), and when a patient is referred, a mental health nurse care manager helps to track the patients’ antidepressant adherence and treatment response while reporting results to primary care clinicians, who are generally responsible for initiating and continuing the antidepressant prescription. For patients preferring nonpharmacologic approaches or for whom an antidepressant may be contraindicated, PC-MHI can provide other assistance. For example, psychologists working in PC-MHI are equipped to provide a brief course of cognitive behavioral therapy sessions, another first-line, evidence-based treatment for clinical depression.

Clinician follow-up to ensure patient adherence, response, and satisfaction, and to adjust treatment as needed is essential. Besides ongoing coordination with PC-MHI services, including mental health clinicians as part of multidisciplinary cancer clinics could offer substantial added value to patients’ comprehensive cancer care. Indeed, the initiation of multicomponent depression care has been shown to improve QOL and role functioning in patients with cancer.³¹ Besides the established benefits on QOL, patients with lung cancer who achieve depression symptom remission also may enjoy a significant survival benefit over patients whose depression symptoms remain untreated during lung cancer treatment as our study suggests.³

Conclusion

Depression is a common comorbid disease among patients with lung cancer with important negative implications for QOL and survival. When it occurs after a cancer diagnosis, depression is expected to impact all phases of a patient’s life through treatment and survivorshi —ultimately affecting long-term survival. Veterans may be at particularly high risk given the increased prevalence of mental illness, including depression and PTSD in this group compared with that of the general population. Early detection and prompt treatment can promote depression remission, prevent relapse, and reduce the eventual emotional and financial burden of the disease. This approach may ultimately diminish the prevalence and persistence of depression symptoms and decrease the associated negative effects of this disease on patients with lung cancer.

The importance of integrated systems of depression treatment for patients with cancer as part of comprehensive cancer care cannot be overstated. Development and implementation of these systems should be a priority of lung cancer clinicians and treatment centers. The integrated system within the VA is well positioned to be a leader in this area, and VA clinicians who care for patients with lung cancer are encouraged to take advantage of available mental health resources. Additional research is urgently needed to explore optimal implementation of depression screening and subsequent treatment delivery to improve cancer patient outcomes in VA and non-VA health care settings.

Acknowledgments
This project was supported in part by the National Cancer Institute of the National Institutes of Health under award K07CA190706 to Dr. Sullivan, a Career Development Award from the Veterans Health Administration Health Service Research and Development (CDA 14-428) to Dr. Teo and the HSR&D Center to Improve Veteran Involvement in Care (CIVIC) (CIN 13-404) at the VA Portland Health Care System.

Author disclosures
The authors report no actual or potential conflicts of interest with regard to this article.

Disclaimer
The VA had no role in the design and conduct of the study; collection, management, analysis, and interpretation of the data; preparation, review, or approval of the manuscript; or decision to submit the manuscript for publication. The opinions expressed herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect those of Federal Practitioner, Frontline Medical Communications Inc., the U.S. Government, or any of its agencies.

Click here to read the digital edition. 

About Research in Context

In this article, the authors of recent scholarship have been asked to discuss the implications of their research on federal health care providers and specifically the veteran and active-duty service member patient populations. Because the article does not include new research and cannot be blinded, it has undergone an abbreviated peer review process. The original article can be found at Sullivan DR, Forsberg CW, Ganzini L, et al. Longitudinal changes in depression symptoms and survival among patients with lung cancer: a national cohort assessment. J Clin Oncol. 2016;34(33):3984-3991.

Although depression is common among patients with cancer, patients with lung cancer are at particularly high risk. The prevalence of major depressive disorder (MDD) among patients with cancer can be as high as 13%, whereas up to 44% of patients with lung cancer experience depression symptoms at some point following their cancer diagnosis.^1-3 These estimates are consistently higher than those of other types of cancer, possibly related to the stigma of the disease and the associated morbidity and mortality that are its hallmarks.^4-8 This potentially life-threatening cancer diagnosis often evokes psychological distress; however, additional stressors contribute to the development of depression, including the effects of chemotherapeutic agents, surgical procedures, radiotherapy, and the consequences of physical symptoms and paraneoplastic syndromes.

In addition to the crippling effects of comorbid depression on patients’ quality of life (QOL), severe and persistent depression among patients with cancer is associated with prolonged hospital stays, worse treatment adherence, physical distress and pain, and increased desire for hastened death.^9-11 During treatment, depression can amplify physical symptoms and interfere with effective coping.^12,13

Depression also is likely a significant factor for the risk of suicide, which is 4 times higher in patients with lung cancer than that of the general population.¹⁴ Most important, as our recent study demonstrated, depression that develops at cancer diagnosis or during cancer treatment may contribute to worse survival. This effect was strongest among patients with early stage disease, in other words, the patients who are most likely to achieve cure.³ This association with early stage disease also has been observed in a strictly veteran population from the northwest U.S.¹⁵

Another key finding of our study was the similar survival among patients who experienced a remission of their depression and those who were never depressed. This finding reinforces the importance of effective depression treatment, which has the potential to reduce depression-related mortality; however, depression treatment was not fully captured and could not be directly compared in our study. Unfortunately, comorbid depression often goes undiagnosed and untreated in cancer patients as they report unmet emotional needs and a desire for psychological support during and after completion of cancer treatment.^16,17

Given the general lack of depression treatment that occurs in patients with cancer, the negative consequences of depression can be sustained well into survivorship—defined clinically as someone who is free of any sign of cancer for 5 years. Cancer survivors frequently report fatigue, mood disturbance, sleep disruption, pain, and cognitive limitations that significantly impact QOL and are associated with disability and increased health care use.¹⁸ These symptoms likely are intertwined with and contribute to the development and persistence of depression. The ramifications of untreated depression on long-term cancer survivor outcomes are not completely understood, as few high-quality studies of depression in cancer survivors exist. However, in a mixed group of patients with cancer, there was a 2-fold risk of mortality in survivors with depression symptoms when these patients were assessed from 1 to 10 years into survivorship.¹⁹ The impact of depression on cancer survivorship is an important aspect of cancer care that deserves significantly more attention from both a research and clinical perspective.

Special Considerations for Veterans

There is a higher prevalence of mental health diagnoses in veterans than that in the general population, and depressive disorders are the most common.^20-22 According to the VA National Registry for Depression, 11% of veterans aged ≥ 65 years have a diagnosis of MDD, a rate more than twice that in the general population of a similar age.²³ However, the actual rate of depression among veterans may be even higher, as studies suggest depression is underdiagnosed in the veteran population.²⁴ In addition to depression, veterans experience other disabling psychological illnesses, such as posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) related to deployment and combat duty or combat-related injuries, such as traumatic brain injuries. The negative consequences of PTSD on cancer outcomes are largely unexplored, but PTSD can contribute to increased health care utilization and costs.^25,26 A similar psychological construct, cancer-related posttraumatic stress (PTS), which develops as a result of a cancer diagnosis or treatment, is associated with missed medical appointments and procedures, which could impact survival.²⁷

Depression Screening and Treatment

Given the negative consequences of comorbid mental illness, professional oncology societies have started developing guidelines regarding the assessments and care of patients with cancer who are experiencing symptoms of depression and/or anxiety.^11,28,29 Among these, the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) has adapted the Pan-Canadian Practice Guideline on Screening, Assessment, and Care of Psychosocial Distress (Depression, Anxiety) in Adults With Cancer.²⁸ Per ASCO, the target audience for these guidelines is health care providers (eg, medical, surgical, and radiation oncologists; psychiatrists; psychologists; primary care providers; nurses; and others involved in the delivery of care for adults with cancer) as well as patients with cancer and their family members and caregivers.²⁸ These guidelines address the optimum screening, assessment, and psychosocial-supportive care interventions for adults with cancer who are identified as experiencing symptoms of depression. Among the most imperative recommendations are periodic assessments across the trajectory of cancer care, including after cure, as well as employing institutional and community resources for depression treatment.

In clinical practice in a VA setting, implementing these guidelines might involve various interventions. First, it is vital for providers to conduct depression screening during periodic health care encounters. Given the high prevalence of depression in patients with lung cancer, we suggest using the 9-item Patient Health Questionnaire (PHQ-9) as an initial screening tool.³⁰ Unlike the abridged 2-item PHQ-2 commonly used in the VA, the PHQ-9 provides an assessment of the full range of depressive symptoms. An elevated PHQ-9 score (≥ 10) is consistent with a major depressive episode and should trigger next steps.³⁰

Once clinically significant depression is identified, initiation of treatment should occur next. The VA is well suited to assist and support non-mental health clinicians—particularly primary care—in treatment initiation and monitoring. This model of partnership is frequently called collaborative care, or integrated care, and it is well positioned to help patients with lung cancer with concomitant depression. In the VA, this model of care is called primary care-mental healthintegration (PC-MHI). One PC-MHI resource is called TIDES (Translating Initiatives for Depression into Effective Solutions), and when a patient is referred, a mental health nurse care manager helps to track the patients’ antidepressant adherence and treatment response while reporting results to primary care clinicians, who are generally responsible for initiating and continuing the antidepressant prescription. For patients preferring nonpharmacologic approaches or for whom an antidepressant may be contraindicated, PC-MHI can provide other assistance. For example, psychologists working in PC-MHI are equipped to provide a brief course of cognitive behavioral therapy sessions, another first-line, evidence-based treatment for clinical depression.

Clinician follow-up to ensure patient adherence, response, and satisfaction, and to adjust treatment as needed is essential. Besides ongoing coordination with PC-MHI services, including mental health clinicians as part of multidisciplinary cancer clinics could offer substantial added value to patients’ comprehensive cancer care. Indeed, the initiation of multicomponent depression care has been shown to improve QOL and role functioning in patients with cancer.³¹ Besides the established benefits on QOL, patients with lung cancer who achieve depression symptom remission also may enjoy a significant survival benefit over patients whose depression symptoms remain untreated during lung cancer treatment as our study suggests.³

Conclusion

Depression is a common comorbid disease among patients with lung cancer with important negative implications for QOL and survival. When it occurs after a cancer diagnosis, depression is expected to impact all phases of a patient’s life through treatment and survivorshi —ultimately affecting long-term survival. Veterans may be at particularly high risk given the increased prevalence of mental illness, including depression and PTSD in this group compared with that of the general population. Early detection and prompt treatment can promote depression remission, prevent relapse, and reduce the eventual emotional and financial burden of the disease. This approach may ultimately diminish the prevalence and persistence of depression symptoms and decrease the associated negative effects of this disease on patients with lung cancer.

The importance of integrated systems of depression treatment for patients with cancer as part of comprehensive cancer care cannot be overstated. Development and implementation of these systems should be a priority of lung cancer clinicians and treatment centers. The integrated system within the VA is well positioned to be a leader in this area, and VA clinicians who care for patients with lung cancer are encouraged to take advantage of available mental health resources. Additional research is urgently needed to explore optimal implementation of depression screening and subsequent treatment delivery to improve cancer patient outcomes in VA and non-VA health care settings.

Acknowledgments
This project was supported in part by the National Cancer Institute of the National Institutes of Health under award K07CA190706 to Dr. Sullivan, a Career Development Award from the Veterans Health Administration Health Service Research and Development (CDA 14-428) to Dr. Teo and the HSR&D Center to Improve Veteran Involvement in Care (CIVIC) (CIN 13-404) at the VA Portland Health Care System.

Author disclosures
The authors report no actual or potential conflicts of interest with regard to this article.

Disclaimer
The VA had no role in the design and conduct of the study; collection, management, analysis, and interpretation of the data; preparation, review, or approval of the manuscript; or decision to submit the manuscript for publication. The opinions expressed herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect those of Federal Practitioner, Frontline Medical Communications Inc., the U.S. Government, or any of its agencies.

Click here to read the digital edition. 

About Research in Context

In this article, the authors of recent scholarship have been asked to discuss the implications of their research on federal health care providers and specifically the veteran and active-duty service member patient populations. Because the article does not include new research and cannot be blinded, it has undergone an abbreviated peer review process. The original article can be found at Sullivan DR, Forsberg CW, Ganzini L, et al. Longitudinal changes in depression symptoms and survival among patients with lung cancer: a national cohort assessment. J Clin Oncol. 2016;34(33):3984-3991.

Although depression is common among patients with cancer, patients with lung cancer are at particularly high risk. The prevalence of major depressive disorder (MDD) among patients with cancer can be as high as 13%, whereas up to 44% of patients with lung cancer experience depression symptoms at some point following their cancer diagnosis.^1-3 These estimates are consistently higher than those of other types of cancer, possibly related to the stigma of the disease and the associated morbidity and mortality that are its hallmarks.^4-8 This potentially life-threatening cancer diagnosis often evokes psychological distress; however, additional stressors contribute to the development of depression, including the effects of chemotherapeutic agents, surgical procedures, radiotherapy, and the consequences of physical symptoms and paraneoplastic syndromes.

In addition to the crippling effects of comorbid depression on patients’ quality of life (QOL), severe and persistent depression among patients with cancer is associated with prolonged hospital stays, worse treatment adherence, physical distress and pain, and increased desire for hastened death.^9-11 During treatment, depression can amplify physical symptoms and interfere with effective coping.^12,13

Depression also is likely a significant factor for the risk of suicide, which is 4 times higher in patients with lung cancer than that of the general population.¹⁴ Most important, as our recent study demonstrated, depression that develops at cancer diagnosis or during cancer treatment may contribute to worse survival. This effect was strongest among patients with early stage disease, in other words, the patients who are most likely to achieve cure.³ This association with early stage disease also has been observed in a strictly veteran population from the northwest U.S.¹⁵

Another key finding of our study was the similar survival among patients who experienced a remission of their depression and those who were never depressed. This finding reinforces the importance of effective depression treatment, which has the potential to reduce depression-related mortality; however, depression treatment was not fully captured and could not be directly compared in our study. Unfortunately, comorbid depression often goes undiagnosed and untreated in cancer patients as they report unmet emotional needs and a desire for psychological support during and after completion of cancer treatment.^16,17

Given the general lack of depression treatment that occurs in patients with cancer, the negative consequences of depression can be sustained well into survivorship—defined clinically as someone who is free of any sign of cancer for 5 years. Cancer survivors frequently report fatigue, mood disturbance, sleep disruption, pain, and cognitive limitations that significantly impact QOL and are associated with disability and increased health care use.¹⁸ These symptoms likely are intertwined with and contribute to the development and persistence of depression. The ramifications of untreated depression on long-term cancer survivor outcomes are not completely understood, as few high-quality studies of depression in cancer survivors exist. However, in a mixed group of patients with cancer, there was a 2-fold risk of mortality in survivors with depression symptoms when these patients were assessed from 1 to 10 years into survivorship.¹⁹ The impact of depression on cancer survivorship is an important aspect of cancer care that deserves significantly more attention from both a research and clinical perspective.

Special Considerations for Veterans

There is a higher prevalence of mental health diagnoses in veterans than that in the general population, and depressive disorders are the most common.^20-22 According to the VA National Registry for Depression, 11% of veterans aged ≥ 65 years have a diagnosis of MDD, a rate more than twice that in the general population of a similar age.²³ However, the actual rate of depression among veterans may be even higher, as studies suggest depression is underdiagnosed in the veteran population.²⁴ In addition to depression, veterans experience other disabling psychological illnesses, such as posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) related to deployment and combat duty or combat-related injuries, such as traumatic brain injuries. The negative consequences of PTSD on cancer outcomes are largely unexplored, but PTSD can contribute to increased health care utilization and costs.^25,26 A similar psychological construct, cancer-related posttraumatic stress (PTS), which develops as a result of a cancer diagnosis or treatment, is associated with missed medical appointments and procedures, which could impact survival.²⁷

Depression Screening and Treatment

Given the negative consequences of comorbid mental illness, professional oncology societies have started developing guidelines regarding the assessments and care of patients with cancer who are experiencing symptoms of depression and/or anxiety.^11,28,29 Among these, the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) has adapted the Pan-Canadian Practice Guideline on Screening, Assessment, and Care of Psychosocial Distress (Depression, Anxiety) in Adults With Cancer.²⁸ Per ASCO, the target audience for these guidelines is health care providers (eg, medical, surgical, and radiation oncologists; psychiatrists; psychologists; primary care providers; nurses; and others involved in the delivery of care for adults with cancer) as well as patients with cancer and their family members and caregivers.²⁸ These guidelines address the optimum screening, assessment, and psychosocial-supportive care interventions for adults with cancer who are identified as experiencing symptoms of depression. Among the most imperative recommendations are periodic assessments across the trajectory of cancer care, including after cure, as well as employing institutional and community resources for depression treatment.

In clinical practice in a VA setting, implementing these guidelines might involve various interventions. First, it is vital for providers to conduct depression screening during periodic health care encounters. Given the high prevalence of depression in patients with lung cancer, we suggest using the 9-item Patient Health Questionnaire (PHQ-9) as an initial screening tool.³⁰ Unlike the abridged 2-item PHQ-2 commonly used in the VA, the PHQ-9 provides an assessment of the full range of depressive symptoms. An elevated PHQ-9 score (≥ 10) is consistent with a major depressive episode and should trigger next steps.³⁰

Once clinically significant depression is identified, initiation of treatment should occur next. The VA is well suited to assist and support non-mental health clinicians—particularly primary care—in treatment initiation and monitoring. This model of partnership is frequently called collaborative care, or integrated care, and it is well positioned to help patients with lung cancer with concomitant depression. In the VA, this model of care is called primary care-mental healthintegration (PC-MHI). One PC-MHI resource is called TIDES (Translating Initiatives for Depression into Effective Solutions), and when a patient is referred, a mental health nurse care manager helps to track the patients’ antidepressant adherence and treatment response while reporting results to primary care clinicians, who are generally responsible for initiating and continuing the antidepressant prescription. For patients preferring nonpharmacologic approaches or for whom an antidepressant may be contraindicated, PC-MHI can provide other assistance. For example, psychologists working in PC-MHI are equipped to provide a brief course of cognitive behavioral therapy sessions, another first-line, evidence-based treatment for clinical depression.

Clinician follow-up to ensure patient adherence, response, and satisfaction, and to adjust treatment as needed is essential. Besides ongoing coordination with PC-MHI services, including mental health clinicians as part of multidisciplinary cancer clinics could offer substantial added value to patients’ comprehensive cancer care. Indeed, the initiation of multicomponent depression care has been shown to improve QOL and role functioning in patients with cancer.³¹ Besides the established benefits on QOL, patients with lung cancer who achieve depression symptom remission also may enjoy a significant survival benefit over patients whose depression symptoms remain untreated during lung cancer treatment as our study suggests.³

Conclusion

Depression is a common comorbid disease among patients with lung cancer with important negative implications for QOL and survival. When it occurs after a cancer diagnosis, depression is expected to impact all phases of a patient’s life through treatment and survivorshi —ultimately affecting long-term survival. Veterans may be at particularly high risk given the increased prevalence of mental illness, including depression and PTSD in this group compared with that of the general population. Early detection and prompt treatment can promote depression remission, prevent relapse, and reduce the eventual emotional and financial burden of the disease. This approach may ultimately diminish the prevalence and persistence of depression symptoms and decrease the associated negative effects of this disease on patients with lung cancer.

The importance of integrated systems of depression treatment for patients with cancer as part of comprehensive cancer care cannot be overstated. Development and implementation of these systems should be a priority of lung cancer clinicians and treatment centers. The integrated system within the VA is well positioned to be a leader in this area, and VA clinicians who care for patients with lung cancer are encouraged to take advantage of available mental health resources. Additional research is urgently needed to explore optimal implementation of depression screening and subsequent treatment delivery to improve cancer patient outcomes in VA and non-VA health care settings.

Acknowledgments
This project was supported in part by the National Cancer Institute of the National Institutes of Health under award K07CA190706 to Dr. Sullivan, a Career Development Award from the Veterans Health Administration Health Service Research and Development (CDA 14-428) to Dr. Teo and the HSR&D Center to Improve Veteran Involvement in Care (CIVIC) (CIN 13-404) at the VA Portland Health Care System.

Author disclosures
The authors report no actual or potential conflicts of interest with regard to this article.

Disclaimer
The VA had no role in the design and conduct of the study; collection, management, analysis, and interpretation of the data; preparation, review, or approval of the manuscript; or decision to submit the manuscript for publication. The opinions expressed herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect those of Federal Practitioner, Frontline Medical Communications Inc., the U.S. Government, or any of its agencies.

Click here to read the digital edition. 

Recent public and professional attention to what is now called the opioid epidemic has obvious implications for surgery and palliative care. Because of the status of “epidemic,” there is a sense of urgency within the surgical and palliative care community to reevaluate the assessment and treatment of patients for whom opioid therapy is being considered.

• Expand your patient’s pain history to include nonphysical dimensions of pain and refer appropriately.
• Know your opioids; carry an opioid conversion table. Errors in opioid conversion can result in significant undertreatment of pain but can result in overdosage just as easily.
• Know your pharmacist. Pharmacists are valuable allies in safe opioid prescribing and monitoring practices.
• Be wary of “standardized” order sets that include opioids. There is no standard dose or standard patient as we are rapidly learning from genomics.
• Utilize your state’s patient drug-monitoring program – a new pain for clinicians, but some headaches are worth it. It clearly has already put the brakes on opioid prescribing.

Given the recent public and professional attention to the problems of opioid misuse, there is a long-overdue opportunity to reassess not only the indications and management of opioid therapy but also our more general approach to the management of pain. There is now an opportunity for surgeons to play a major role in improving opioid-prescribing practice. One potentially successful approach could be better assessment and management of pain through an awareness and application of palliative care principles. Like all encounters with uncertainty, the best way out of the current opioid dilemma is the way through: Surgeons should not abandon opioids but – in conjunction with nurses, palliative care practitioners, pharmacists, and pain and anesthesia specialists – reinvent their role in the war on suffering.


 

Dr. Dunn is the medical director of the palliative care consultation service at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center Hamot in Erie, Pa., and vice chair of the ACS Committee on Surgical Palliative Care.

Recent public and professional attention to what is now called the opioid epidemic has obvious implications for surgery and palliative care. Because of the status of “epidemic,” there is a sense of urgency within the surgical and palliative care community to reevaluate the assessment and treatment of patients for whom opioid therapy is being considered.

• Expand your patient’s pain history to include nonphysical dimensions of pain and refer appropriately.
• Know your opioids; carry an opioid conversion table. Errors in opioid conversion can result in significant undertreatment of pain but can result in overdosage just as easily.
• Know your pharmacist. Pharmacists are valuable allies in safe opioid prescribing and monitoring practices.
• Be wary of “standardized” order sets that include opioids. There is no standard dose or standard patient as we are rapidly learning from genomics.
• Utilize your state’s patient drug-monitoring program – a new pain for clinicians, but some headaches are worth it. It clearly has already put the brakes on opioid prescribing.

Given the recent public and professional attention to the problems of opioid misuse, there is a long-overdue opportunity to reassess not only the indications and management of opioid therapy but also our more general approach to the management of pain. There is now an opportunity for surgeons to play a major role in improving opioid-prescribing practice. One potentially successful approach could be better assessment and management of pain through an awareness and application of palliative care principles. Like all encounters with uncertainty, the best way out of the current opioid dilemma is the way through: Surgeons should not abandon opioids but – in conjunction with nurses, palliative care practitioners, pharmacists, and pain and anesthesia specialists – reinvent their role in the war on suffering.


 

Dr. Dunn is the medical director of the palliative care consultation service at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center Hamot in Erie, Pa., and vice chair of the ACS Committee on Surgical Palliative Care.

Recent public and professional attention to what is now called the opioid epidemic has obvious implications for surgery and palliative care. Because of the status of “epidemic,” there is a sense of urgency within the surgical and palliative care community to reevaluate the assessment and treatment of patients for whom opioid therapy is being considered.

• Expand your patient’s pain history to include nonphysical dimensions of pain and refer appropriately.
• Know your opioids; carry an opioid conversion table. Errors in opioid conversion can result in significant undertreatment of pain but can result in overdosage just as easily.
• Know your pharmacist. Pharmacists are valuable allies in safe opioid prescribing and monitoring practices.
• Be wary of “standardized” order sets that include opioids. There is no standard dose or standard patient as we are rapidly learning from genomics.
• Utilize your state’s patient drug-monitoring program – a new pain for clinicians, but some headaches are worth it. It clearly has already put the brakes on opioid prescribing.

Given the recent public and professional attention to the problems of opioid misuse, there is a long-overdue opportunity to reassess not only the indications and management of opioid therapy but also our more general approach to the management of pain. There is now an opportunity for surgeons to play a major role in improving opioid-prescribing practice. One potentially successful approach could be better assessment and management of pain through an awareness and application of palliative care principles. Like all encounters with uncertainty, the best way out of the current opioid dilemma is the way through: Surgeons should not abandon opioids but – in conjunction with nurses, palliative care practitioners, pharmacists, and pain and anesthesia specialists – reinvent their role in the war on suffering.


 

Dr. Dunn is the medical director of the palliative care consultation service at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center Hamot in Erie, Pa., and vice chair of the ACS Committee on Surgical Palliative Care.

The rigid dichotomy between combat deployment and postdeployment environments necessitates a multitude of cognitive, behavioral, and emotional adjustments for National Guard members and reservists to resume postdeployment civilian lifestyles successfully. Reacclimating to the postdeployment world is not a quick process for these veterans because of the time required to adjust from a deeply ingrained military combat mentality to civilian life. The process of this reintegration into the civilian world is known as postdeployment transition.

More than half of post-9/11 combat veterans report at least some difficulty with postdeployment transition.^1,2 Frequently encountered symptoms of this period include impaired sleep, low frustration tolerance, decreased attention, poor concentration, short-term memory deficits, and difficulty with emotional regulation.^1,3,4 Veterans will have difficulty reintegrating into the family unit and society without successful coping strategies to address these symptoms. If transition symptoms are prolonged, veterans are at risk for developing chronic adjustment difficulty or mental health issues.

Although there is significant attention paid to postdeployment adjustment by military family advocacy groups, there is little information in the medical literature on what constitutes common, nonpathologic postdeployment reactions among combat veterans. Frequently, when postdeployment transition symptoms are discussed, the medical literature tends to explain these in the context of a mental health disorder, such posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) or a cognitive injury, such as traumatic brain injury.^5-8 Without a balanced understanding of normal postdeployment transitions, a health care provider (HCP) inappropriately may equate transition symptoms with the presence of mental health disorders or cognitive injury and medicalize the coping strategies needed to promote healthy adjustment.

The purpose of this article is to promote HCP awareness of common, nonpathologic postdeployment transition symptoms in combat veterans who are National Guard members or reservists. Such knowledge will enable HCPs to evaluate transition symptoms among these combat veterans reentering the civilian world, normalize common transition reactions, and recognize when further intervention is needed. This article reflects the author’s experience as a medical director working in a VA postdeployment clinic combined with data available in the medical literature and lay press.

Postdeployment Transition Symptoms

Dysregulation of emotional expression in returning combat veterans potentially can be present throughout the postdeployment period of adjustment. Although individual experiences vary widely in intensity and frequency, during postdeployment transition veterans often note difficulty in adjusting emotional expression to match that of nonmilitary counterparts.^1,9-11 These difficulties usually fall into 2 broad categories: (1) relative emotional neutrality to major life events that cause nonmilitary civilians great joy or sadness; and (2) overreaction to trivial events, causing significant irritation, anger, or sadness that normally would not produce such emotional reactions in nonmilitary civilians. The former is largely overlooked in medical literature to date except in relation to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 5th Edition (DSM-5) categories, and the latter is often described in limited terms as increased irritability, restlessness, and low frustration tolerance. This emotional dysregulation creates confusing paradoxes for veterans. For example, a veteran might feel no strong emotion when notified of the death of a close relative and yet cry uncontrollably while watching a sad scene in a fictional movie.

Sleep difficulties are intrinsic to the postdeployment period.^9-12 Sleep-wake cycles often are altered, reflecting residual effects of the rigid schedules required by military duties and poor sleep hygiene in the combat theater. Inadequate, nonrestful sleep is frequently reported on return to the civilian world. Difficulty falling asleep or difficulty staying asleep also commonly occurs. Nightmares may be present.

Transient difficulty with concentration and attention is often prominent within the postdeployment transition period.^9-11,13 Manifestations are variable, but problems with focusing on minor tasks are commonly reported. A more intense effort to master new concepts may be required. Learning styles developed during predeployment phases may be altered so that more conscious effort is required to comprehend and retain new information.

Short-term memory frequently may be affected during postdeployment transition.^9-11,13 Veterans often report postdeployment difficulty in recalling appointments or tasks that must be completed even if they had a keen sense of memory during predeployment or deployment. Veterans also may have difficulty recalling the details of specific routines that were done without hesitation during deployment. Compared with predeployment time frames, veterans may exert greater effort to recall newly learned material.

Automatic behaviors necessary for survival in a combat theater still may be prominent in the postdeployment period.^10,11,14 Aggressive driving required to avoid deployment ambush may be problematic during the postdeployment transition. Steering clear of any roadside trash may be a residual instinctive drive postdeployment because of the risk of improvised explosive devices concealed by debris in the combat theater. Veterans may avoid sitting with their back to the exit as the result of military safety training. Carrying weapons to ensure safety may be a compelling urge, because being armed and ready at all times was necessary for survival during deployment. Avoiding large crowds may be another strong tendency, because throngs of people were associated with potential danger in the combat theater.

Decision making may be challenging to resume in the postdeployment phase.^9-11,15 In the deployment theater, time is relativel structured with rules in place, whereas at home veterans face a myriad of choices and decisions that must be made in order to complete the responsibilities of everyday living. As a result, making decisions about what item to buy, which clothes to wear, or what activities to prioritize, though relatively minor, can be a source of significant frustration. It may be difficult to independently navigate a realm of options available for new employment, schooling, or benefits, especially when there is little or no prior experience with these issues.

Relationship of Symptoms to Mental Health Diagnoses

Postdeployment transition symptoms do not automatically indicate the presence of an underlying mental health diagnosis. However, persistent and/or severe symptoms of postdeployment transition can overlap with or contribute to the development of mental health concerns (Table 1).¹⁴ The effects of the emotional disconnect also can exacerbate underlying mental health diagnoses.

While postdeployment emotional numbness to major life events, irritability, sleep disturbances, and impaired concentration can be associated with acute stress disorder (ASD) or PTSD, there is a constellation of other symptoms that must be present to diagnose these psychiatric conditions.¹⁶ Diagnostic criteria include persistent intrusive symptoms associated with the trauma, persistent avoidance of triggers/reminders associated with the trauma, significant changes in physiologic and cognitive arousal states, and negative changes in mood or cognition related to the trauma.¹⁶ The symptoms must cause significant impairment in some aspect of functioning on an individual, social, or occupational level. Acute stress disorder occurs when the symptoms last 30 days or less, whereas PTSD is diagnosed if the symptoms persist longer than a month.

Impaired emotional regulation, sleep disturbances, and decreased concentration also can be associated with depression or anxiety but are insufficient in themselves to make the diagnosis of those disorders.¹⁶ At least a 2-week history of depressed mood or inability to experience interest or pleasure in activities must be present as one of the criteria for depression as well as 4 or more other symptoms affecting sleep, appetite, energy, movement, self-esteem, or suicidal thoughts. Anxiety disorders have varying specific diagnostic criteria, but recurrent excessive worrying is a hallmark. Just like ASD or PTSD, the diagnostic symptoms of either depression or anxiety disorders must be causing significant impairment in functioning on an individual, social, or occupational level.

Irritability, sleep disturbances, agitation, memory impairment, and difficulty with concentration and attention can mimic the symptoms associated with mild-to-moderate traumatic brain injury (TBI).^17,18 However, symptom onset must have a temporal relationship with a TBI. The presence of other TBI symptoms not associated with normal postdeployment transition usually can be used to differentiate between the diagnoses. Those TBI symptoms include recurrent headaches, poor balance, dizziness, tinnitus, and/or light sensitivity. In the majority of mild TBI cases, the symptoms resolve spontaneously within 3 months of TBI symptom manifestation.^16,19 For those with persistent postconcussive syndrome, symptoms usually stabilize or improve over time.^18,19 If symptoms worsen, there is often a confounding diagnosis such as PTSD or depression.^17,20,21

Some returning combat veterans mistakenly believe postdeployment emotional transition symptoms are always a sign of a mental health disorder. Because there is a significant stigma associated with mental health disorders as well as potential repercussions on their service record if they use mental health resources, many reservists and National Guard members avoid accessing health care services if they are experiencing postdeployment adjustment issues, especially if those symptoms are related to emotional transitions.^22-24 Unfortunately, such avoidance carries the risk that stress-inducing symptoms will persist and potentiate adjustment problems.

Course of Symptoms

The range for the postdeployment adjustment period generally falls within 3 to 12 months but can extend longer, depending on individual factors.^10,11,25 Factors include presence of significant physical injury or illness, co-occurrence of mental health issues, underlying communication styles, and efficacy of coping strategies chosen. Although there is no clear-cut time frame for transition, ideally transition is complete when the returning veteran successfully enters his or her civilian lifestyle roles and feels a sense of purpose and belonging in society.

Postdeployment transition symptoms occur on a continuum in terms of duration and intensity for reservists and National Guard members. It is difficult to predict how specific transition symptoms will affect a particular veteran. The degree to which those symptoms will complicate reintegration depends on the individual veteran’s ability to adapt within the psychosocial context in which the symptoms occur. For example, minor irritation may be short-lived if a veteran can employ techniques to diffuse that feeling. Alternatively, minor irritation also suddenly may explode into a powerful wave of anger if the veteran has significant underlying emotional tension. Similarly, impaired short-term memory may be limited to forgetting a few appointments or may be so common that the veteran is at risk of losing track of his or her day. The level of memory impairment depends on emotional functioning, co-occurring stressors, and use of adaptive strategies.

In general, as these veterans successfully take on civilian routines, postdeployment transition symptoms will improve. Although such symptom improvement may be a passive process for some veterans, others will need to actively employ strategies to help change the military combat mind-set. The goal is to initiate useful interventions early in transition before symptoms become problematic.¹⁴

There are numerous self-help techniques and mobile apps that can be applied to a wide number of symptoms. Viable strategies include exercise, yoga, meditation, mindfulness training, and cognitive reframing. Reaching out for early assistance from various military assistance organizations that are well versed in dealing with postdeployment transition challenges often is helpful for reducing stress and navigating postdeployment obstacles (Table 2).

Symptom Strain and Exacerbation

Whenever stumbling blocks are encountered during the postdeployment period, any transition symptom can persist and/or worsen.^10,11,14 Emotional disconnect and other transition symptoms can be exacerbated by physical, psychological, and social stressors common in the postdeployment period. Insomnia, poor quality sleep, or other sleep impairments that frequently occur as part of postdeployment transition can negatively impact the veteran’s ability to psychologically cope with daytime stressors. Poor concentration and short-term memory impairment noted by many reservists and National Guard members in the postdeployment phase can cause increased difficulty in attention to the moment and complicate completion of routine tasks. These difficulties can compound frustration and irritation to minor events and make it hard to emotionally connect with more serious issues.

Concentration and attention to mundane activities may be further reduced if the veteran feels no connection to the civilian world and/or experiences the surreal sensation that he or she should be attending to more serious life and death matters, such as those experienced in the combat theater. Ongoing psychological adjustment to physical injuries sustained during deployment can limit emotional flexibility when adapting to either minor or major stressors. Insufficient financial resources, work issues, or school problems can potentiate irritation, anger, and sadness and create an overwhelming emotional overload, leading to helplessness and hopelessness.

Perceived irregularities in emotional connection to the civilian world can significantly strain interpersonal relationships and be powerful impediments to successful reintegration.^9,11,14 Failure to express emotions to major life events in the civilian world can result in combat veterans being viewed as not empathetic to others’ feelings. Overreaction to trivial events during postdeployment can lead to the veteran being labeled as unreasonable, controlling, and/or unpredictable. Persistent emotional disconnect with civilians engenders a growing sense of emotional isolation from family and friends when there is either incorrect interpretation of emotional transitions or failure to adapt healthy coping strategies. This isolation further enlarges the emotional chasm and may greatly diminish the veteran’s ability to seek assistance and appropriately address stressors in the civilian world.

Transition and the Family

Emotional disconnection may be more acutely felt within the immediate family unit.²⁶ Redistribution of family unit responsibilities during deployment may mean that roles the veteran played during predeployment now may be handled by a partner. On the veteran’s return to the civilian world, such circumstances require active renegotiation of duties. Interactions with loved ones, especially children, may be colored by the family members’ individual perspectives on deployment as well as by the veteran’s transition symptoms. When there is disagreement about role responsibilities and/or underlying family resentment about deployment, conditions are ripe for significant discord between the veteran and family members, vital loss of partner intimacy, and notable loss of psychological safety to express feelings within the family unit. If there are  concerns about infidelity by the veteran or significant other during the period of deployment, postdeployment tensions can further escalate. If unaddressed in the presence of emotional disconnect, any of these situations can raise the risk of domestic violence and destruction of relationships.

Without adequate knowledge of common postdeployment transitions and coping strategies, the postdeployment transition period is often bewildering to returning veterans and their families. They are taken aback by postdeployment behaviors that do not conform to the veteran’s predeployment personality or mannerisms. Families may feel they have “lost” the veteran and view the emotionally distant postdeployment veteran as a stranger. Veterans mistakenly may view the postdeployment emotional disconnect as evidence that they were permanently altered by deployment and no longer can assimilate into the civilian world. Unless veterans and families develop an awareness of the postdeployment transition symptoms and healthy coping strategies,  these perspectives can contribute to a veteran’s persistent feelings of alienation, significant sense of personal failure, and loss of vital social supports.

When transition symptoms are or have the potential to become significant stressors, veterans would benefit from mental health counseling either individually or with family members. Overcoming the stigma of seeking mental health services can prove challenging. Explaining that these postdeployment symptoms occur commonly, stem from military combat training, can be reversed, and when reversed will empower the individual to control his or her life may help veterans overcome the stigma and seek mental health services.

The fear of future career impairment with the military reserve or National Guard is another real concern among this cohort who might consider accessing behavioral health care, especially since VA mental health medical records can be accessed by DoD officials through links with the VHA. Fortunately, this concern can be alleviated through the use of Vet Centers, free-standing counseling centers nationwide that offer no-cost individual and family counseling to veterans with combat exposure. Vet Center counseling records are completely confidential, never shared, and are not linked to the VHA electronic health record, the DoD, or any other entity. Although Vet Center providers don’t prescribe medications, the counselors can actively address many issues for veterans and their families. For individuals who do not live near a Vet Center or for those who require psychiatric medications, a frank discussion on the benefits of treatment vs the risk of treatment avoidance must be held.

Assessing Symptoms and Coping Mechanisms

Postdeployment transition symptoms vary, depending on the nature and context of the symptom. Not only must the returning reservist and National Guard member be screened for symptoms, but HCPs also should assess the impact of those symptoms on the veteran and his or her interpersonal relationships. Some veterans will feel that the symptoms have relatively minor impact in their lives, because the veteran can easily compensate for the transient effects. Others may feel that the symptoms are somewhat burdensome because the issues are complicating the smooth transition to civilian roles. Still others will judge the symptoms to be devastating because of the negative effects on personal control, selfesteem, and emotional connection with family and friends.

In addition to screening for symptoms, HCPs should assess these veterans’ current coping adaptations to various transition symptoms. Whereas some activities may be functional and promote reintegration, other short-term coping solutions may cripple the veteran’s ability to successfully resume civilian life. Global avoidance of communication with others and/or retreating from all social situations is a destructive coping pattern that can further alienate veterans from their families and the civilian world. Reacting with anger to all stressful issues is another maladaptive pattern of coping with life’s frustrations. Because of the potential to self-medicate when dealing with social difficulties, depression, anxiety, or other mental health diagnoses, veterans may develop an inappropriate reliance on drugs or alcohol to handle postdeployment stressors.²⁷ Therefore, HCP screening for substance use disorders (SUD) is important so that interventions can be initiated early.

Because of the overlap of postdeployment transition symptoms with mental health disorders and the relative frequency of those mental health disorders among combat veterans, HCPs should have a heightened awareness of the potential for co-occurring mental health difficulties in the postdeployment reservist and National Guard cohort. Health care providers should screen for depression, anxiety, and PTSD. Even if initial screening is done early within the transition period, repeat screening would be of benefit 6 months into the postdeployment period because of the tendency of mental health issues to develop during that time.^28,29

By evaluating the impact of the transition symptom and coping strategies on these veterans’ lives, HCPs can better determine which strategies might adequately compensate for symptom effects. In general, informal counseling, even if just to help veterans normalize postdeployment transition symptoms and develop a plan to address such symptoms, can significantly minimize the negative impact of transition symptoms.^14,26 Specific symptoms should be targeted by interventions that match the degree of symptom impact.

Symptoms to be aggressively addressed are those that significantly interfere with successful reintegration into the civilian world. For example, persistent sleep difficulties should be dealt with because they can worsen all other transition symptoms. However, the majority of strategies to address sleep do not require medication unless there are confounding factors such as severe nightmares. Minor memory issues attributed to the transition phase can be mitigated by several strategies to improve recall, including use of task lists, digital calendars, or other memory-prodding techniques. However, severe memory issues related to depression or anxiety likely would require pharmaceutical assistance and formal counseling in addition to other nonpharmacologic approaches.

Intermittent irritation or restlessness may be amenable to selfhelp strategies, but significant anger outbursts or aggression will require additional support, such as formal behavioral interventions to help identify the triggers and develop strategic plans to reduce emotional tension. A mild sense of not belonging may resolve without intervention, but a stronger sense of alienation will require further evaluation.

Conclusion

Civilian reintegration after combat deployment is a gradual process rather than a discrete event for reservists and National Guard members. There are common, nonpathologic postdeployment transition symptoms that, if misunderstood or inappropriately addressed, can complicate civilian reintegration. Health care providers are in the unique position to promote a healthy postdeployment transition by assisting veterans to recognize nonpathologic transition symptoms, select appropriate coping strategies, and seek further assistance for more complex problems.

The rigid dichotomy between combat deployment and postdeployment environments necessitates a multitude of cognitive, behavioral, and emotional adjustments for National Guard members and reservists to resume postdeployment civilian lifestyles successfully. Reacclimating to the postdeployment world is not a quick process for these veterans because of the time required to adjust from a deeply ingrained military combat mentality to civilian life. The process of this reintegration into the civilian world is known as postdeployment transition.

More than half of post-9/11 combat veterans report at least some difficulty with postdeployment transition.^1,2 Frequently encountered symptoms of this period include impaired sleep, low frustration tolerance, decreased attention, poor concentration, short-term memory deficits, and difficulty with emotional regulation.^1,3,4 Veterans will have difficulty reintegrating into the family unit and society without successful coping strategies to address these symptoms. If transition symptoms are prolonged, veterans are at risk for developing chronic adjustment difficulty or mental health issues.

Although there is significant attention paid to postdeployment adjustment by military family advocacy groups, there is little information in the medical literature on what constitutes common, nonpathologic postdeployment reactions among combat veterans. Frequently, when postdeployment transition symptoms are discussed, the medical literature tends to explain these in the context of a mental health disorder, such posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) or a cognitive injury, such as traumatic brain injury.^5-8 Without a balanced understanding of normal postdeployment transitions, a health care provider (HCP) inappropriately may equate transition symptoms with the presence of mental health disorders or cognitive injury and medicalize the coping strategies needed to promote healthy adjustment.

The purpose of this article is to promote HCP awareness of common, nonpathologic postdeployment transition symptoms in combat veterans who are National Guard members or reservists. Such knowledge will enable HCPs to evaluate transition symptoms among these combat veterans reentering the civilian world, normalize common transition reactions, and recognize when further intervention is needed. This article reflects the author’s experience as a medical director working in a VA postdeployment clinic combined with data available in the medical literature and lay press.

Postdeployment Transition Symptoms

Dysregulation of emotional expression in returning combat veterans potentially can be present throughout the postdeployment period of adjustment. Although individual experiences vary widely in intensity and frequency, during postdeployment transition veterans often note difficulty in adjusting emotional expression to match that of nonmilitary counterparts.^1,9-11 These difficulties usually fall into 2 broad categories: (1) relative emotional neutrality to major life events that cause nonmilitary civilians great joy or sadness; and (2) overreaction to trivial events, causing significant irritation, anger, or sadness that normally would not produce such emotional reactions in nonmilitary civilians. The former is largely overlooked in medical literature to date except in relation to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 5th Edition (DSM-5) categories, and the latter is often described in limited terms as increased irritability, restlessness, and low frustration tolerance. This emotional dysregulation creates confusing paradoxes for veterans. For example, a veteran might feel no strong emotion when notified of the death of a close relative and yet cry uncontrollably while watching a sad scene in a fictional movie.

Sleep difficulties are intrinsic to the postdeployment period.^9-12 Sleep-wake cycles often are altered, reflecting residual effects of the rigid schedules required by military duties and poor sleep hygiene in the combat theater. Inadequate, nonrestful sleep is frequently reported on return to the civilian world. Difficulty falling asleep or difficulty staying asleep also commonly occurs. Nightmares may be present.

Transient difficulty with concentration and attention is often prominent within the postdeployment transition period.^9-11,13 Manifestations are variable, but problems with focusing on minor tasks are commonly reported. A more intense effort to master new concepts may be required. Learning styles developed during predeployment phases may be altered so that more conscious effort is required to comprehend and retain new information.

Short-term memory frequently may be affected during postdeployment transition.^9-11,13 Veterans often report postdeployment difficulty in recalling appointments or tasks that must be completed even if they had a keen sense of memory during predeployment or deployment. Veterans also may have difficulty recalling the details of specific routines that were done without hesitation during deployment. Compared with predeployment time frames, veterans may exert greater effort to recall newly learned material.

Automatic behaviors necessary for survival in a combat theater still may be prominent in the postdeployment period.^10,11,14 Aggressive driving required to avoid deployment ambush may be problematic during the postdeployment transition. Steering clear of any roadside trash may be a residual instinctive drive postdeployment because of the risk of improvised explosive devices concealed by debris in the combat theater. Veterans may avoid sitting with their back to the exit as the result of military safety training. Carrying weapons to ensure safety may be a compelling urge, because being armed and ready at all times was necessary for survival during deployment. Avoiding large crowds may be another strong tendency, because throngs of people were associated with potential danger in the combat theater.

Decision making may be challenging to resume in the postdeployment phase.^9-11,15 In the deployment theater, time is relativel structured with rules in place, whereas at home veterans face a myriad of choices and decisions that must be made in order to complete the responsibilities of everyday living. As a result, making decisions about what item to buy, which clothes to wear, or what activities to prioritize, though relatively minor, can be a source of significant frustration. It may be difficult to independently navigate a realm of options available for new employment, schooling, or benefits, especially when there is little or no prior experience with these issues.

Relationship of Symptoms to Mental Health Diagnoses

Postdeployment transition symptoms do not automatically indicate the presence of an underlying mental health diagnosis. However, persistent and/or severe symptoms of postdeployment transition can overlap with or contribute to the development of mental health concerns (Table 1).¹⁴ The effects of the emotional disconnect also can exacerbate underlying mental health diagnoses.

While postdeployment emotional numbness to major life events, irritability, sleep disturbances, and impaired concentration can be associated with acute stress disorder (ASD) or PTSD, there is a constellation of other symptoms that must be present to diagnose these psychiatric conditions.¹⁶ Diagnostic criteria include persistent intrusive symptoms associated with the trauma, persistent avoidance of triggers/reminders associated with the trauma, significant changes in physiologic and cognitive arousal states, and negative changes in mood or cognition related to the trauma.¹⁶ The symptoms must cause significant impairment in some aspect of functioning on an individual, social, or occupational level. Acute stress disorder occurs when the symptoms last 30 days or less, whereas PTSD is diagnosed if the symptoms persist longer than a month.

Impaired emotional regulation, sleep disturbances, and decreased concentration also can be associated with depression or anxiety but are insufficient in themselves to make the diagnosis of those disorders.¹⁶ At least a 2-week history of depressed mood or inability to experience interest or pleasure in activities must be present as one of the criteria for depression as well as 4 or more other symptoms affecting sleep, appetite, energy, movement, self-esteem, or suicidal thoughts. Anxiety disorders have varying specific diagnostic criteria, but recurrent excessive worrying is a hallmark. Just like ASD or PTSD, the diagnostic symptoms of either depression or anxiety disorders must be causing significant impairment in functioning on an individual, social, or occupational level.

Irritability, sleep disturbances, agitation, memory impairment, and difficulty with concentration and attention can mimic the symptoms associated with mild-to-moderate traumatic brain injury (TBI).^17,18 However, symptom onset must have a temporal relationship with a TBI. The presence of other TBI symptoms not associated with normal postdeployment transition usually can be used to differentiate between the diagnoses. Those TBI symptoms include recurrent headaches, poor balance, dizziness, tinnitus, and/or light sensitivity. In the majority of mild TBI cases, the symptoms resolve spontaneously within 3 months of TBI symptom manifestation.^16,19 For those with persistent postconcussive syndrome, symptoms usually stabilize or improve over time.^18,19 If symptoms worsen, there is often a confounding diagnosis such as PTSD or depression.^17,20,21

Some returning combat veterans mistakenly believe postdeployment emotional transition symptoms are always a sign of a mental health disorder. Because there is a significant stigma associated with mental health disorders as well as potential repercussions on their service record if they use mental health resources, many reservists and National Guard members avoid accessing health care services if they are experiencing postdeployment adjustment issues, especially if those symptoms are related to emotional transitions.^22-24 Unfortunately, such avoidance carries the risk that stress-inducing symptoms will persist and potentiate adjustment problems.

Course of Symptoms

The range for the postdeployment adjustment period generally falls within 3 to 12 months but can extend longer, depending on individual factors.^10,11,25 Factors include presence of significant physical injury or illness, co-occurrence of mental health issues, underlying communication styles, and efficacy of coping strategies chosen. Although there is no clear-cut time frame for transition, ideally transition is complete when the returning veteran successfully enters his or her civilian lifestyle roles and feels a sense of purpose and belonging in society.

Postdeployment transition symptoms occur on a continuum in terms of duration and intensity for reservists and National Guard members. It is difficult to predict how specific transition symptoms will affect a particular veteran. The degree to which those symptoms will complicate reintegration depends on the individual veteran’s ability to adapt within the psychosocial context in which the symptoms occur. For example, minor irritation may be short-lived if a veteran can employ techniques to diffuse that feeling. Alternatively, minor irritation also suddenly may explode into a powerful wave of anger if the veteran has significant underlying emotional tension. Similarly, impaired short-term memory may be limited to forgetting a few appointments or may be so common that the veteran is at risk of losing track of his or her day. The level of memory impairment depends on emotional functioning, co-occurring stressors, and use of adaptive strategies.

In general, as these veterans successfully take on civilian routines, postdeployment transition symptoms will improve. Although such symptom improvement may be a passive process for some veterans, others will need to actively employ strategies to help change the military combat mind-set. The goal is to initiate useful interventions early in transition before symptoms become problematic.¹⁴

There are numerous self-help techniques and mobile apps that can be applied to a wide number of symptoms. Viable strategies include exercise, yoga, meditation, mindfulness training, and cognitive reframing. Reaching out for early assistance from various military assistance organizations that are well versed in dealing with postdeployment transition challenges often is helpful for reducing stress and navigating postdeployment obstacles (Table 2).

Symptom Strain and Exacerbation

Whenever stumbling blocks are encountered during the postdeployment period, any transition symptom can persist and/or worsen.^10,11,14 Emotional disconnect and other transition symptoms can be exacerbated by physical, psychological, and social stressors common in the postdeployment period. Insomnia, poor quality sleep, or other sleep impairments that frequently occur as part of postdeployment transition can negatively impact the veteran’s ability to psychologically cope with daytime stressors. Poor concentration and short-term memory impairment noted by many reservists and National Guard members in the postdeployment phase can cause increased difficulty in attention to the moment and complicate completion of routine tasks. These difficulties can compound frustration and irritation to minor events and make it hard to emotionally connect with more serious issues.

Concentration and attention to mundane activities may be further reduced if the veteran feels no connection to the civilian world and/or experiences the surreal sensation that he or she should be attending to more serious life and death matters, such as those experienced in the combat theater. Ongoing psychological adjustment to physical injuries sustained during deployment can limit emotional flexibility when adapting to either minor or major stressors. Insufficient financial resources, work issues, or school problems can potentiate irritation, anger, and sadness and create an overwhelming emotional overload, leading to helplessness and hopelessness.

Perceived irregularities in emotional connection to the civilian world can significantly strain interpersonal relationships and be powerful impediments to successful reintegration.^9,11,14 Failure to express emotions to major life events in the civilian world can result in combat veterans being viewed as not empathetic to others’ feelings. Overreaction to trivial events during postdeployment can lead to the veteran being labeled as unreasonable, controlling, and/or unpredictable. Persistent emotional disconnect with civilians engenders a growing sense of emotional isolation from family and friends when there is either incorrect interpretation of emotional transitions or failure to adapt healthy coping strategies. This isolation further enlarges the emotional chasm and may greatly diminish the veteran’s ability to seek assistance and appropriately address stressors in the civilian world.

Transition and the Family

Emotional disconnection may be more acutely felt within the immediate family unit.²⁶ Redistribution of family unit responsibilities during deployment may mean that roles the veteran played during predeployment now may be handled by a partner. On the veteran’s return to the civilian world, such circumstances require active renegotiation of duties. Interactions with loved ones, especially children, may be colored by the family members’ individual perspectives on deployment as well as by the veteran’s transition symptoms. When there is disagreement about role responsibilities and/or underlying family resentment about deployment, conditions are ripe for significant discord between the veteran and family members, vital loss of partner intimacy, and notable loss of psychological safety to express feelings within the family unit. If there are  concerns about infidelity by the veteran or significant other during the period of deployment, postdeployment tensions can further escalate. If unaddressed in the presence of emotional disconnect, any of these situations can raise the risk of domestic violence and destruction of relationships.

Without adequate knowledge of common postdeployment transitions and coping strategies, the postdeployment transition period is often bewildering to returning veterans and their families. They are taken aback by postdeployment behaviors that do not conform to the veteran’s predeployment personality or mannerisms. Families may feel they have “lost” the veteran and view the emotionally distant postdeployment veteran as a stranger. Veterans mistakenly may view the postdeployment emotional disconnect as evidence that they were permanently altered by deployment and no longer can assimilate into the civilian world. Unless veterans and families develop an awareness of the postdeployment transition symptoms and healthy coping strategies,  these perspectives can contribute to a veteran’s persistent feelings of alienation, significant sense of personal failure, and loss of vital social supports.

When transition symptoms are or have the potential to become significant stressors, veterans would benefit from mental health counseling either individually or with family members. Overcoming the stigma of seeking mental health services can prove challenging. Explaining that these postdeployment symptoms occur commonly, stem from military combat training, can be reversed, and when reversed will empower the individual to control his or her life may help veterans overcome the stigma and seek mental health services.

The fear of future career impairment with the military reserve or National Guard is another real concern among this cohort who might consider accessing behavioral health care, especially since VA mental health medical records can be accessed by DoD officials through links with the VHA. Fortunately, this concern can be alleviated through the use of Vet Centers, free-standing counseling centers nationwide that offer no-cost individual and family counseling to veterans with combat exposure. Vet Center counseling records are completely confidential, never shared, and are not linked to the VHA electronic health record, the DoD, or any other entity. Although Vet Center providers don’t prescribe medications, the counselors can actively address many issues for veterans and their families. For individuals who do not live near a Vet Center or for those who require psychiatric medications, a frank discussion on the benefits of treatment vs the risk of treatment avoidance must be held.

Assessing Symptoms and Coping Mechanisms

Postdeployment transition symptoms vary, depending on the nature and context of the symptom. Not only must the returning reservist and National Guard member be screened for symptoms, but HCPs also should assess the impact of those symptoms on the veteran and his or her interpersonal relationships. Some veterans will feel that the symptoms have relatively minor impact in their lives, because the veteran can easily compensate for the transient effects. Others may feel that the symptoms are somewhat burdensome because the issues are complicating the smooth transition to civilian roles. Still others will judge the symptoms to be devastating because of the negative effects on personal control, selfesteem, and emotional connection with family and friends.

In addition to screening for symptoms, HCPs should assess these veterans’ current coping adaptations to various transition symptoms. Whereas some activities may be functional and promote reintegration, other short-term coping solutions may cripple the veteran’s ability to successfully resume civilian life. Global avoidance of communication with others and/or retreating from all social situations is a destructive coping pattern that can further alienate veterans from their families and the civilian world. Reacting with anger to all stressful issues is another maladaptive pattern of coping with life’s frustrations. Because of the potential to self-medicate when dealing with social difficulties, depression, anxiety, or other mental health diagnoses, veterans may develop an inappropriate reliance on drugs or alcohol to handle postdeployment stressors.²⁷ Therefore, HCP screening for substance use disorders (SUD) is important so that interventions can be initiated early.

Because of the overlap of postdeployment transition symptoms with mental health disorders and the relative frequency of those mental health disorders among combat veterans, HCPs should have a heightened awareness of the potential for co-occurring mental health difficulties in the postdeployment reservist and National Guard cohort. Health care providers should screen for depression, anxiety, and PTSD. Even if initial screening is done early within the transition period, repeat screening would be of benefit 6 months into the postdeployment period because of the tendency of mental health issues to develop during that time.^28,29

By evaluating the impact of the transition symptom and coping strategies on these veterans’ lives, HCPs can better determine which strategies might adequately compensate for symptom effects. In general, informal counseling, even if just to help veterans normalize postdeployment transition symptoms and develop a plan to address such symptoms, can significantly minimize the negative impact of transition symptoms.^14,26 Specific symptoms should be targeted by interventions that match the degree of symptom impact.

Symptoms to be aggressively addressed are those that significantly interfere with successful reintegration into the civilian world. For example, persistent sleep difficulties should be dealt with because they can worsen all other transition symptoms. However, the majority of strategies to address sleep do not require medication unless there are confounding factors such as severe nightmares. Minor memory issues attributed to the transition phase can be mitigated by several strategies to improve recall, including use of task lists, digital calendars, or other memory-prodding techniques. However, severe memory issues related to depression or anxiety likely would require pharmaceutical assistance and formal counseling in addition to other nonpharmacologic approaches.

Intermittent irritation or restlessness may be amenable to selfhelp strategies, but significant anger outbursts or aggression will require additional support, such as formal behavioral interventions to help identify the triggers and develop strategic plans to reduce emotional tension. A mild sense of not belonging may resolve without intervention, but a stronger sense of alienation will require further evaluation.

Conclusion

Civilian reintegration after combat deployment is a gradual process rather than a discrete event for reservists and National Guard members. There are common, nonpathologic postdeployment transition symptoms that, if misunderstood or inappropriately addressed, can complicate civilian reintegration. Health care providers are in the unique position to promote a healthy postdeployment transition by assisting veterans to recognize nonpathologic transition symptoms, select appropriate coping strategies, and seek further assistance for more complex problems.

The rigid dichotomy between combat deployment and postdeployment environments necessitates a multitude of cognitive, behavioral, and emotional adjustments for National Guard members and reservists to resume postdeployment civilian lifestyles successfully. Reacclimating to the postdeployment world is not a quick process for these veterans because of the time required to adjust from a deeply ingrained military combat mentality to civilian life. The process of this reintegration into the civilian world is known as postdeployment transition.

More than half of post-9/11 combat veterans report at least some difficulty with postdeployment transition.^1,2 Frequently encountered symptoms of this period include impaired sleep, low frustration tolerance, decreased attention, poor concentration, short-term memory deficits, and difficulty with emotional regulation.^1,3,4 Veterans will have difficulty reintegrating into the family unit and society without successful coping strategies to address these symptoms. If transition symptoms are prolonged, veterans are at risk for developing chronic adjustment difficulty or mental health issues.

Although there is significant attention paid to postdeployment adjustment by military family advocacy groups, there is little information in the medical literature on what constitutes common, nonpathologic postdeployment reactions among combat veterans. Frequently, when postdeployment transition symptoms are discussed, the medical literature tends to explain these in the context of a mental health disorder, such posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) or a cognitive injury, such as traumatic brain injury.^5-8 Without a balanced understanding of normal postdeployment transitions, a health care provider (HCP) inappropriately may equate transition symptoms with the presence of mental health disorders or cognitive injury and medicalize the coping strategies needed to promote healthy adjustment.

The purpose of this article is to promote HCP awareness of common, nonpathologic postdeployment transition symptoms in combat veterans who are National Guard members or reservists. Such knowledge will enable HCPs to evaluate transition symptoms among these combat veterans reentering the civilian world, normalize common transition reactions, and recognize when further intervention is needed. This article reflects the author’s experience as a medical director working in a VA postdeployment clinic combined with data available in the medical literature and lay press.

Postdeployment Transition Symptoms

Dysregulation of emotional expression in returning combat veterans potentially can be present throughout the postdeployment period of adjustment. Although individual experiences vary widely in intensity and frequency, during postdeployment transition veterans often note difficulty in adjusting emotional expression to match that of nonmilitary counterparts.^1,9-11 These difficulties usually fall into 2 broad categories: (1) relative emotional neutrality to major life events that cause nonmilitary civilians great joy or sadness; and (2) overreaction to trivial events, causing significant irritation, anger, or sadness that normally would not produce such emotional reactions in nonmilitary civilians. The former is largely overlooked in medical literature to date except in relation to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 5th Edition (DSM-5) categories, and the latter is often described in limited terms as increased irritability, restlessness, and low frustration tolerance. This emotional dysregulation creates confusing paradoxes for veterans. For example, a veteran might feel no strong emotion when notified of the death of a close relative and yet cry uncontrollably while watching a sad scene in a fictional movie.

Sleep difficulties are intrinsic to the postdeployment period.^9-12 Sleep-wake cycles often are altered, reflecting residual effects of the rigid schedules required by military duties and poor sleep hygiene in the combat theater. Inadequate, nonrestful sleep is frequently reported on return to the civilian world. Difficulty falling asleep or difficulty staying asleep also commonly occurs. Nightmares may be present.

Transient difficulty with concentration and attention is often prominent within the postdeployment transition period.^9-11,13 Manifestations are variable, but problems with focusing on minor tasks are commonly reported. A more intense effort to master new concepts may be required. Learning styles developed during predeployment phases may be altered so that more conscious effort is required to comprehend and retain new information.

Short-term memory frequently may be affected during postdeployment transition.^9-11,13 Veterans often report postdeployment difficulty in recalling appointments or tasks that must be completed even if they had a keen sense of memory during predeployment or deployment. Veterans also may have difficulty recalling the details of specific routines that were done without hesitation during deployment. Compared with predeployment time frames, veterans may exert greater effort to recall newly learned material.

Automatic behaviors necessary for survival in a combat theater still may be prominent in the postdeployment period.^10,11,14 Aggressive driving required to avoid deployment ambush may be problematic during the postdeployment transition. Steering clear of any roadside trash may be a residual instinctive drive postdeployment because of the risk of improvised explosive devices concealed by debris in the combat theater. Veterans may avoid sitting with their back to the exit as the result of military safety training. Carrying weapons to ensure safety may be a compelling urge, because being armed and ready at all times was necessary for survival during deployment. Avoiding large crowds may be another strong tendency, because throngs of people were associated with potential danger in the combat theater.

Decision making may be challenging to resume in the postdeployment phase.^9-11,15 In the deployment theater, time is relativel structured with rules in place, whereas at home veterans face a myriad of choices and decisions that must be made in order to complete the responsibilities of everyday living. As a result, making decisions about what item to buy, which clothes to wear, or what activities to prioritize, though relatively minor, can be a source of significant frustration. It may be difficult to independently navigate a realm of options available for new employment, schooling, or benefits, especially when there is little or no prior experience with these issues.

Relationship of Symptoms to Mental Health Diagnoses

Postdeployment transition symptoms do not automatically indicate the presence of an underlying mental health diagnosis. However, persistent and/or severe symptoms of postdeployment transition can overlap with or contribute to the development of mental health concerns (Table 1).¹⁴ The effects of the emotional disconnect also can exacerbate underlying mental health diagnoses.

While postdeployment emotional numbness to major life events, irritability, sleep disturbances, and impaired concentration can be associated with acute stress disorder (ASD) or PTSD, there is a constellation of other symptoms that must be present to diagnose these psychiatric conditions.¹⁶ Diagnostic criteria include persistent intrusive symptoms associated with the trauma, persistent avoidance of triggers/reminders associated with the trauma, significant changes in physiologic and cognitive arousal states, and negative changes in mood or cognition related to the trauma.¹⁶ The symptoms must cause significant impairment in some aspect of functioning on an individual, social, or occupational level. Acute stress disorder occurs when the symptoms last 30 days or less, whereas PTSD is diagnosed if the symptoms persist longer than a month.

Impaired emotional regulation, sleep disturbances, and decreased concentration also can be associated with depression or anxiety but are insufficient in themselves to make the diagnosis of those disorders.¹⁶ At least a 2-week history of depressed mood or inability to experience interest or pleasure in activities must be present as one of the criteria for depression as well as 4 or more other symptoms affecting sleep, appetite, energy, movement, self-esteem, or suicidal thoughts. Anxiety disorders have varying specific diagnostic criteria, but recurrent excessive worrying is a hallmark. Just like ASD or PTSD, the diagnostic symptoms of either depression or anxiety disorders must be causing significant impairment in functioning on an individual, social, or occupational level.

Irritability, sleep disturbances, agitation, memory impairment, and difficulty with concentration and attention can mimic the symptoms associated with mild-to-moderate traumatic brain injury (TBI).^17,18 However, symptom onset must have a temporal relationship with a TBI. The presence of other TBI symptoms not associated with normal postdeployment transition usually can be used to differentiate between the diagnoses. Those TBI symptoms include recurrent headaches, poor balance, dizziness, tinnitus, and/or light sensitivity. In the majority of mild TBI cases, the symptoms resolve spontaneously within 3 months of TBI symptom manifestation.^16,19 For those with persistent postconcussive syndrome, symptoms usually stabilize or improve over time.^18,19 If symptoms worsen, there is often a confounding diagnosis such as PTSD or depression.^17,20,21

Some returning combat veterans mistakenly believe postdeployment emotional transition symptoms are always a sign of a mental health disorder. Because there is a significant stigma associated with mental health disorders as well as potential repercussions on their service record if they use mental health resources, many reservists and National Guard members avoid accessing health care services if they are experiencing postdeployment adjustment issues, especially if those symptoms are related to emotional transitions.^22-24 Unfortunately, such avoidance carries the risk that stress-inducing symptoms will persist and potentiate adjustment problems.

Course of Symptoms

The range for the postdeployment adjustment period generally falls within 3 to 12 months but can extend longer, depending on individual factors.^10,11,25 Factors include presence of significant physical injury or illness, co-occurrence of mental health issues, underlying communication styles, and efficacy of coping strategies chosen. Although there is no clear-cut time frame for transition, ideally transition is complete when the returning veteran successfully enters his or her civilian lifestyle roles and feels a sense of purpose and belonging in society.

Postdeployment transition symptoms occur on a continuum in terms of duration and intensity for reservists and National Guard members. It is difficult to predict how specific transition symptoms will affect a particular veteran. The degree to which those symptoms will complicate reintegration depends on the individual veteran’s ability to adapt within the psychosocial context in which the symptoms occur. For example, minor irritation may be short-lived if a veteran can employ techniques to diffuse that feeling. Alternatively, minor irritation also suddenly may explode into a powerful wave of anger if the veteran has significant underlying emotional tension. Similarly, impaired short-term memory may be limited to forgetting a few appointments or may be so common that the veteran is at risk of losing track of his or her day. The level of memory impairment depends on emotional functioning, co-occurring stressors, and use of adaptive strategies.

In general, as these veterans successfully take on civilian routines, postdeployment transition symptoms will improve. Although such symptom improvement may be a passive process for some veterans, others will need to actively employ strategies to help change the military combat mind-set. The goal is to initiate useful interventions early in transition before symptoms become problematic.¹⁴

There are numerous self-help techniques and mobile apps that can be applied to a wide number of symptoms. Viable strategies include exercise, yoga, meditation, mindfulness training, and cognitive reframing. Reaching out for early assistance from various military assistance organizations that are well versed in dealing with postdeployment transition challenges often is helpful for reducing stress and navigating postdeployment obstacles (Table 2).

Symptom Strain and Exacerbation

Whenever stumbling blocks are encountered during the postdeployment period, any transition symptom can persist and/or worsen.^10,11,14 Emotional disconnect and other transition symptoms can be exacerbated by physical, psychological, and social stressors common in the postdeployment period. Insomnia, poor quality sleep, or other sleep impairments that frequently occur as part of postdeployment transition can negatively impact the veteran’s ability to psychologically cope with daytime stressors. Poor concentration and short-term memory impairment noted by many reservists and National Guard members in the postdeployment phase can cause increased difficulty in attention to the moment and complicate completion of routine tasks. These difficulties can compound frustration and irritation to minor events and make it hard to emotionally connect with more serious issues.

Concentration and attention to mundane activities may be further reduced if the veteran feels no connection to the civilian world and/or experiences the surreal sensation that he or she should be attending to more serious life and death matters, such as those experienced in the combat theater. Ongoing psychological adjustment to physical injuries sustained during deployment can limit emotional flexibility when adapting to either minor or major stressors. Insufficient financial resources, work issues, or school problems can potentiate irritation, anger, and sadness and create an overwhelming emotional overload, leading to helplessness and hopelessness.

Perceived irregularities in emotional connection to the civilian world can significantly strain interpersonal relationships and be powerful impediments to successful reintegration.^9,11,14 Failure to express emotions to major life events in the civilian world can result in combat veterans being viewed as not empathetic to others’ feelings. Overreaction to trivial events during postdeployment can lead to the veteran being labeled as unreasonable, controlling, and/or unpredictable. Persistent emotional disconnect with civilians engenders a growing sense of emotional isolation from family and friends when there is either incorrect interpretation of emotional transitions or failure to adapt healthy coping strategies. This isolation further enlarges the emotional chasm and may greatly diminish the veteran’s ability to seek assistance and appropriately address stressors in the civilian world.

Transition and the Family

Emotional disconnection may be more acutely felt within the immediate family unit.²⁶ Redistribution of family unit responsibilities during deployment may mean that roles the veteran played during predeployment now may be handled by a partner. On the veteran’s return to the civilian world, such circumstances require active renegotiation of duties. Interactions with loved ones, especially children, may be colored by the family members’ individual perspectives on deployment as well as by the veteran’s transition symptoms. When there is disagreement about role responsibilities and/or underlying family resentment about deployment, conditions are ripe for significant discord between the veteran and family members, vital loss of partner intimacy, and notable loss of psychological safety to express feelings within the family unit. If there are  concerns about infidelity by the veteran or significant other during the period of deployment, postdeployment tensions can further escalate. If unaddressed in the presence of emotional disconnect, any of these situations can raise the risk of domestic violence and destruction of relationships.

Without adequate knowledge of common postdeployment transitions and coping strategies, the postdeployment transition period is often bewildering to returning veterans and their families. They are taken aback by postdeployment behaviors that do not conform to the veteran’s predeployment personality or mannerisms. Families may feel they have “lost” the veteran and view the emotionally distant postdeployment veteran as a stranger. Veterans mistakenly may view the postdeployment emotional disconnect as evidence that they were permanently altered by deployment and no longer can assimilate into the civilian world. Unless veterans and families develop an awareness of the postdeployment transition symptoms and healthy coping strategies,  these perspectives can contribute to a veteran’s persistent feelings of alienation, significant sense of personal failure, and loss of vital social supports.

When transition symptoms are or have the potential to become significant stressors, veterans would benefit from mental health counseling either individually or with family members. Overcoming the stigma of seeking mental health services can prove challenging. Explaining that these postdeployment symptoms occur commonly, stem from military combat training, can be reversed, and when reversed will empower the individual to control his or her life may help veterans overcome the stigma and seek mental health services.

The fear of future career impairment with the military reserve or National Guard is another real concern among this cohort who might consider accessing behavioral health care, especially since VA mental health medical records can be accessed by DoD officials through links with the VHA. Fortunately, this concern can be alleviated through the use of Vet Centers, free-standing counseling centers nationwide that offer no-cost individual and family counseling to veterans with combat exposure. Vet Center counseling records are completely confidential, never shared, and are not linked to the VHA electronic health record, the DoD, or any other entity. Although Vet Center providers don’t prescribe medications, the counselors can actively address many issues for veterans and their families. For individuals who do not live near a Vet Center or for those who require psychiatric medications, a frank discussion on the benefits of treatment vs the risk of treatment avoidance must be held.

Assessing Symptoms and Coping Mechanisms

Postdeployment transition symptoms vary, depending on the nature and context of the symptom. Not only must the returning reservist and National Guard member be screened for symptoms, but HCPs also should assess the impact of those symptoms on the veteran and his or her interpersonal relationships. Some veterans will feel that the symptoms have relatively minor impact in their lives, because the veteran can easily compensate for the transient effects. Others may feel that the symptoms are somewhat burdensome because the issues are complicating the smooth transition to civilian roles. Still others will judge the symptoms to be devastating because of the negative effects on personal control, selfesteem, and emotional connection with family and friends.

In addition to screening for symptoms, HCPs should assess these veterans’ current coping adaptations to various transition symptoms. Whereas some activities may be functional and promote reintegration, other short-term coping solutions may cripple the veteran’s ability to successfully resume civilian life. Global avoidance of communication with others and/or retreating from all social situations is a destructive coping pattern that can further alienate veterans from their families and the civilian world. Reacting with anger to all stressful issues is another maladaptive pattern of coping with life’s frustrations. Because of the potential to self-medicate when dealing with social difficulties, depression, anxiety, or other mental health diagnoses, veterans may develop an inappropriate reliance on drugs or alcohol to handle postdeployment stressors.²⁷ Therefore, HCP screening for substance use disorders (SUD) is important so that interventions can be initiated early.

Because of the overlap of postdeployment transition symptoms with mental health disorders and the relative frequency of those mental health disorders among combat veterans, HCPs should have a heightened awareness of the potential for co-occurring mental health difficulties in the postdeployment reservist and National Guard cohort. Health care providers should screen for depression, anxiety, and PTSD. Even if initial screening is done early within the transition period, repeat screening would be of benefit 6 months into the postdeployment period because of the tendency of mental health issues to develop during that time.^28,29

By evaluating the impact of the transition symptom and coping strategies on these veterans’ lives, HCPs can better determine which strategies might adequately compensate for symptom effects. In general, informal counseling, even if just to help veterans normalize postdeployment transition symptoms and develop a plan to address such symptoms, can significantly minimize the negative impact of transition symptoms.^14,26 Specific symptoms should be targeted by interventions that match the degree of symptom impact.

Symptoms to be aggressively addressed are those that significantly interfere with successful reintegration into the civilian world. For example, persistent sleep difficulties should be dealt with because they can worsen all other transition symptoms. However, the majority of strategies to address sleep do not require medication unless there are confounding factors such as severe nightmares. Minor memory issues attributed to the transition phase can be mitigated by several strategies to improve recall, including use of task lists, digital calendars, or other memory-prodding techniques. However, severe memory issues related to depression or anxiety likely would require pharmaceutical assistance and formal counseling in addition to other nonpharmacologic approaches.

Intermittent irritation or restlessness may be amenable to selfhelp strategies, but significant anger outbursts or aggression will require additional support, such as formal behavioral interventions to help identify the triggers and develop strategic plans to reduce emotional tension. A mild sense of not belonging may resolve without intervention, but a stronger sense of alienation will require further evaluation.

Conclusion

Civilian reintegration after combat deployment is a gradual process rather than a discrete event for reservists and National Guard members. There are common, nonpathologic postdeployment transition symptoms that, if misunderstood or inappropriately addressed, can complicate civilian reintegration. Health care providers are in the unique position to promote a healthy postdeployment transition by assisting veterans to recognize nonpathologic transition symptoms, select appropriate coping strategies, and seek further assistance for more complex problems.