Scheduled maintenance on AMTA's website will take place Tuesday, December 17th between 11 PM thru Wednesday, December 18th 6 AM CT. Some services will be temporarily unavailable. These include logging in/account and course access, membership/course purchases, and Find a Massage Therapist searches. Information and resources remain available. Thank you for your patience while we improve our site to serve you better.

Helping Military Veterans with Massage Therapy
Massage General Courses

Helping Military Veterans with Massage Therapy

Author(s): Chester “Trip” Buckenmaier III, Nicole Miller, Niki Munk

2CE credits 8 Lessons Text

Learn specific skills for providing massage therapy to military veterans. Explore the benefits of massage, and the potential issues that may arise for this special population. Gain an understanding of the regulations for military veterans to have access to alternative therapies.

This course includes short videos to enhance the text content.

When you finish this course, you will be able to:

  • Describe specific skills required for working with military veterans.
  • Discuss issues that may arise when providing massage therapy for veterans. 
  • Define the regulations for military veterans to have access to alternative therapies.
  • Cite research on the benefits of massage therapy for veterans and the general population.

  1. Video Segment 1
  2. Benefits of Massage Therapy
  3. TOMCATT for Military Veterans
  4. Video Segment 2
  5. Building Community Care for Veterans
  6. Video Segment 3
  7. Pain Management and Federal Medicine
  8. Further Your Knowledge

Chester “Trip” Buckenmaier III, MD, Colonel, U.S. Army (Retired) is the program director and principal investigator for the Uniformed Services University’s (USU) Defense & Veterans Center for Integrative Pain Management (DVCIPM) under the department of Military Emergency Medicine.

Nicole Miller, MS is a professional educator, community educator and massage therapist. As an Integrative Medicine Coordinator at Crouse Health, she facilitates patient education programs, including the Perinatal Anxiety & Depression program. Supported by experiences in higher education administration and instruction, she created the Caring Hands & Hearts Massage for Veterans program.

Niki Munk, PhD is a massage therapist and assistant professor of Health Sciences at Indiana University. She is one of 13 international Fellows in ARCCIM’s International Complementary Medicine Research Leadership Program and a co-investigator on the VA TOMCATT study. Prior to academia, Dr. Munk was Program Director and a lead instructor for the Lexington Healing Arts Academy in Lexington, Kentucky. Today, she uses research to help bridge the accessibility gap by building a stronger evidence for the field in hopes it will lead to increased routine 3rd party coverage for massage therapy.