Design and challenges for a randomized, multi-site clinical trial comparing the use of service dogs and emotional support dogs in Veterans with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a leading cause of impairments in quality of life and functioning among Veterans. Service dogs have been promoted as an effective adjunctive intervention for PTSD, however published research is limited and design and implementation flaws in published studies limit validated conclusions. This paper describes the rationale for the study design, a detailed methodological description, and implementation challenges of a multisite randomized clinical trial examining the impact of service dogs on the on the functioning and quality of life of Veterans with PTSD.

Manual Wheelchair Skills Training for Community-Dwelling Veterans with Spinal Cord Injury: A Randomized Controlled Trial.

Objectives: To test the hypotheses that community-dwelling veterans with spinal cord injury (SCI) who receive the Wheelchair Skills Training Program (WSTP) in their own environments significantly improve their manual wheelchair-skills capacity, retain those improvements at one year and improve participation in comparison with an Educational Control (EC) group.

Methods: We carried out a randomized controlled trial, studying 106 veterans with SCI from three Veterans Affairs rehabilitation centers. Each participant received either five one-on-one WSTP or EC sessions 30-45 minutes in duration.

The Veterans Health Administration's traumatic brain injury clinical reminder screen and evaluation: Practice patterns.

The goals of this study were to describe clinical practice patterns associated with the Veterans Health Administration's (VHA's) Comprehensive Traumatic Brain Injury Evaluation (CTBIE) and determine whether practice patterns vary by patient, provider, or facility characteristics. Veterans (N = 614) who had initial healthcare visits between 2008, and 2011 and who had previously completed the VHA's traumatic brain injury (TBI) screen and subsequent CTBIE were drawn from a national database. Participants were primarily male (95%) with a mean age of 29.