Determinants of successful transition literature review

Abstract

Introduction: To understand the current Canadian research on transition from military to civilian life, the Office of the Veterans Ombudsman (OVO) initiated a literature review of peer-reviewed work from both academic and government sources, to help identify which factors contribute to a successful transition to civilian life for medically-released Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) Veterans. Methods: A scoping review was conducted by searching Embase, MEDLINE, PsycINFO, Google Scholar and the Veterans Affairs Canada (VAC) Research Directorate website for Canadian articles that described transition facilitators in any of the domains identified by the OVO. Results: In total, 94 relevant studies were identified and most of these focused on all Veterans without identifying a medical or non-medical release. Only 18 addressed the determinants of successful transition and only 2 focused on investigating transition issues for medically-released CAF Veterans compared to their non-medically-released peers. Discussion: The largest limitation found in the literature is the scarcity of articles related to identifying the factors that facilitate a successful transition for medically-released CAF Veterans. A further limitation is that the majority of surveys conducted were based on cohorts that had not experienced transition under the New Veterans Charter (NVC), implemented in 2006, or had only a small number of NVC subjects in their cohort. Given the significant policy and program changes implemented with the NVC, this is a compelling rationale for the requirement of more Canadian research to determine the effectiveness of the NVC policy and programs on transition outcomes for Canadian Veterans.