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Background: In 2011, the White House announced its Joining Forces initiative to encourage communities, businesses and other institutions to create employment, education and wellness resources for military servicemembers and their families. WebMD and Medscape became early supporters of Joining Forces. Medscape LLC is an open-access education portal with membership of more than 500,000 U.S. physicians and 900,000 nurses.
Program background: Medscape launched a military families website in June 2011 with a CME/CE-accredited clinical practice assessment that measured clinicians' familiarity with screening, diagnosis, treatment and referral strategies for mental health issues most often reported in servicemembers and their families.
Evaluation Methods and Results: Among the findings of over 39,000 participating clinicians, only half report routinely screening patients for substance abuse, and less than 20% routinely ask veterans or their families about PTSD or traumatic brain injury. While approximately 30% of clinicians report routinely screening spouses, children or parents of servicemembers for major depressive disorder, the same clinicians report doing so for veterans only 5% of the time.
Conclusions: Results of the assessment served as formative research to support the development of 11 CME/CE activities focused on improving these results. The topics ranged from substance abuse to coordinating service with the VA. As of April 2013, more than 170,000 U.S. clinicians have taken part in one or more of the activities. This presentation will report findings from the baseline assessment, describe the education planning and development process, and summarize the results achieved with this project.
Implications for research and/or practice: The findings suggest broad need for education for community clinicians on screening, diagnosis and treatment for a range of mental health conditions, particularly in the context of military servicemembers and their families.