It's a national partnership between hospice providers and the Department of Veterans Affairs that trains hospice staff on veteran-specific end-of-life needs and helps recognize a veteran's military service as part of their hospice care. VITAS Healthcare's Milwaukee office describes running this program on its own site.
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Because a veteran's end-of-life experience can carry specific emotional weight tied to their service -- including, for some, trauma related to combat experience surfacing again near the end of life -- hospice staff trained through this kind of program are specifically prepared to recognize and respond to that, rather than treating every hospice patient identically. Milwaukee's Zablocki VA Medical Center and the broader concentration of veterans in this metro make veteran-specific hospice training especially relevant here. If your family member is a veteran, ask any hospice provider you're considering directly whether their staff have this kind of veteran-specific training, and what their process looks like for honoring a veteran's service as part of hospice care.
