Posttraumatic growth and posttraumatic stress among military medical personnel.

Military medical personnel deployed to war zones are dually burdened with stressors related to providing healthcare and combat and operational experiences. To better understand how different types and levels of stress exposure relate to positive and negative mental health outcomes among military medical personnel, the associations between combat and healthcare stress exposure and posttraumatic growth and posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) were examined among 253 Air Force medical personnel recently redeployed from Iraq. Both types of stress exposure were uniquely associated with increased PTSD symptomatology. However, combat exposure was linearly associated with PTSD, suggesting a dose-response relationship, whereas the relationship between healthcare stress and PTSD was curvilinear. Both forms of stress exposure showed an inverted U-shaped relationship with posttraumatic growth.