NICoE Social Work: Helping service members, families navigate life after TBI

Photo By Megan Garcia | U.S. Public Health Service Cdr. Wendy Pettit, who has served as a social worker for 22 years, was instrumental in building the National Intrepid Center of Excellence's Social Work Program. Pettit, who now serves as the department chief of clinical operations at the NICoE, was the eighth NICoE employee and first social worker hired in March of 2010. The NICoE works to advance the clinical care, diagnosis, research and education of military service members with traumatic brain injuries and psychological health conditions. (Courtesy photo)  

BETHESDA, MD, UNITED STATES

03.30.2020

Story by Megan Garcia 

National Intrepid Center of Excellence

Although social workers assisted service members during World War I as American Red Cross employees, the social work profession within the military community would not be solidified until July of 1945 when the Army commissioned its first officers into the social work field. Today social workers remain an integral part of the Department of Defense, helping service members and their families address and manage social, emotional, physiological and familial challenges brought on by military service. The Walter Reed National Military Medical Center’s National Intrepid Center of Excellence in Bethesda, Maryland, employs 10 social workers who continue to uphold this mantle.

The NICoE works to advance the clinical care, diagnosis, research and education of military service members with traumatic brain injuries and psychological health conditions. U.S. Public Health Service Cdr. Wendy Pettit, who has served as a social worker for 22 years, was instrumental in building NICoE’s social work program and remains an important part of its progress and success.

Pettit, who now serves as the department chief of clinical operations at the NICoE, was the eighth NICoE employee and first social worker hired in March of 2010, seven months before the NICoE would open its doors to its first patient.

“I was walking around here in a hard hat,” Pettit said jokingly. “I knew as much about NICoE as anyone knew at that time. It was brand knew, but I knew we were going to take care of military personnel who had traumatic brain injuries and psychological health issues. I knew that they were going to incorporate in some way, shape or form, family into the program, which is what actually appealed to me.”

The NICoE uses an interdisciplinary approach, which allows patients to experience the full spectrum of TBI care in a collaborative environment that promotes physical, psychological and spiritual healing ranging from individual outpatient treatment, an intensive four-week program, inpatient consults and several family-centered outpatient treatment modalities. NICoE patients meet with a team of specialized providers who collect a comprehensive history, performs clinical evaluations, and initiates individualized patient and family-centered treatment plans.

“This is the coolest place to be a social worker,” said Pettit. “Within our model of interdisciplinary care, the social workers have the unique ability to see the boarder picture and to help patients and family members in a holistic way. It’s not so much symptom-based as it is how patients cope with whatever their situation is in term of community, their work and their family. That broad-based approach to social work is something that I think is unique in any medical field.”

Pettit added bringing families into the patient’s treatment plan and providing them with the same education they provide the patients while also helping family members to better cope with the changes in their family dynamics is something she thoroughly enjoys.

“Without social work here, there would be a huge hole in our treatment team,” said Pettit. “We’re the ones who really have our finger on the pulse of what’s really going on with the patients from a system’s perspective and how they’re doing across the number of different domains.”

Service members who sustain TBIs may sometimes feel a loss of self. Depending on the severity of an injury, those who sustain a TBI could experience various cognitive and behavioral disruptions in their everyday lives. Therefore Pettit believes more than anything being a social worker at NICoE means helping patients to find themselves again.

“I think being a social worker here really enables you to meet patients where they are and to try and understand what their strengths are,” said Pettit. “Everybody comes into any situation with a set of strengths, and sometimes patients don’t realize that they have strengths and trying to help them navigate through that is something that I think I’m very blessed to do.”

• Date Taken: 03.30.2020
• Date Posted: 03.30.2020 11:24
• Story ID: 366161
• Location: BETHESDA, MD, US