By: Jason Jowers
On March 17th, 2022, OneOp hosted a webinar called “Brain Health: Understanding Military-Related TBIs.” This webinar was the first of two webinars featuring the Traumatic Brain Injury Center of Excellence (TBICoE) and featured in the Month of March to highlight Brain Injury Awareness Month.
The goals of this webinar focused primarily on understanding what is new in the advancement for treating TBI and concussion-related symptoms. We learned about resources to support families and caregivers of service members, as well as gained awareness of symptom clusters, risk factors, and targeted treatment. We also looked at the VA PolyTrauma System of Care and TBI Care in the Military Health System to understand concussion recovery trajectory.
We were joined in this webinar by Kristen Benson, Regional Education Coordinator for the Traumatic Brain Injury Center of Excellence (TBICoE) of the Defense Health Agency. She is a licensed social worker in the Commonwealth of Virginia and earned her Master of Social Work degree at the University of Pennsylvania in 2020. In addition to her work with the Traumatic Brain Injury Center of Excellence, she is a supervisee in psychotherapy for private practice and is completing a Master of Business Administration degree with Johns Hopkins University Carey School of Business.
Webinar Highlights
- This webinar began with learning the definition of traumatic brain injury and the current understanding of concussion including symptoms, risk factors, and treatments. This also included the impact of concussion and TBI worldwide according to the DoD.
- Kristen then began talking about the new MACE 2 Multimodal Tool, a concussion assessment to be used as soon as an injury event as possible. MACE 2 helps to identify individualized symptoms as well as to understand the recovery projection.
- We then discussed the VA Polytrauma TBI System of Care, which are centers and teams across the country that do research and assist in inpatient and outpatient treatment for TBIs and concussions.
- Finally, Kristen shared TBICoE’s educational resources and their Caregiver Guide, a pdf to assist caregivers of service members and veterans with TBI/concussion.
On-Demand Viewing and CE Info
If you missed the live event, you could watch the YouTube archived recording on the webinar event page. Free continuing education credits for this event are still available. Case Management CE credits are available through March 2023, Ohio Nursing Association contact hours, and the UT Social Work CE credits are available through March 2024.
Also, be sure and get caught up with part two of our series with TBICoE called “Support for Reintegration after TBI: Strategies For Advocates, Care Coordinators, and Case Managers.” This webinar took place on March 30th, 2022, and focused on discussing strategies to understand, support, and educate the caregiver along their journey and explore family and relationship dynamics following TBI. Archived viewing and CE opportunities are still available.
Blog Image: Photo by Hainguyenrp from Pixabay
