Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a common health problem in individuals coping with a serious trauma or life-threatening event. It can occur due to wars, natural disasters, rape, and many other life-threatening events. However, how do healthcare providers know how to diagnose and treat someone with PTSD? It is difficult to diagnose someone with PTSD, but once diagnosed, nurses are extremely involved in the care of these individuals. PTSD is especially common in military veterans who have experienced a traumatic event in combat. It is important for nurses and other healthcare professionals to recognize and understand how to treat a servicemember with PTSD. When I graduate I will be a military nurse. I expect to take care of soldiers returning from war quite often. It is important to me to be able to evaluate a military member and be able to recognize the signs and symptoms of PTSD. As a nurse I not only need to be able to recognize the symptoms, but I also need to know how to care for someone with this disorder to improve their quality of life. Understanding how to care for servicemembers suffering from PTSD is important and not well understood. As of April 2010, statistics show that eighteen U.S. soldiers were committing suicide every day due to depression related to PTSD (“Understanding Combat PTSD from the Inside, Out,” 2007). There seems to be no recognition that service members returning from war suffer from PTSD. As healthcare professionals, it should be mandatory to screen for PTSD in soldiers returning from war to avoid it going unrecognized. Therefore, it is the nurses' responsibility to know how to care for these ailing military vets... half of the paper... health care team (Baxter, 2004). An article by Marycarol Rossignal recognizes post-traumatic stress disorder in military veterans. The article provides statistics, insights into the three main symptoms of PTSD, screening, treatment and lifelong management. Statistics, symptoms, screening and treatment were able to be used in the document. No studies were identified, but most of the information can be easily incorporated into nursing care (Rossignal & Chandler, 2010). Although PTSD is difficult to diagnose, with the right teaching, nurses can successfully assess and help diagnose a patient with PTSD. Significant signs and symptoms should alert a nurse to whether or not a patient has PTSD. Military veterans are especially at risk for combat-related PTSD and with the correct assessment by a nurse, the patient can receive the correct treatment to overcome PTSD.