Rear Adm. Karen Flaherty, senior health care executive and deputy chief of wounded, ill and injured at BUMED, spoke with Navy students and staff Thursday afternoon at the National Naval Medical Center about providing access to and quality of care for wounded service members. Capt. Key Watkins, commanding officer of the Navy Safe Harbor Command, and Capt. Lewin Wright, director of Comprehensive Casualty Care Working Group N12, also spoke about services and objectives of the Navy Safe Harbor Command.

The program is the Navy’s focal point for non-medical care management of wounded, ill and injured sailors, Watkins said.

The hourlong presentation attracted a large crowd to the dining room in the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences.

Flaherty, who joined the Navy reserves in 1982, explained to the medical students the importance of patients having access to care. Preventing symptoms from becoming disabled includes hiring enough people to get warriors the care they need, she said.

Flaherty also discussed how patients often face stigmas, which might hold them back from seeking care, especially psychological health care.

‘‘People don’t want to appear weak or injured. It’s no different than having diabetes, it’s no different than having chest discomfort,” she said. ‘‘It is no different, except there’s been a stigma ... and as you wear a uniform, the stigma, people have felt, has often followed you.”

Flaherty told the group how important it is to prevent any of these symptoms from becoming a disorder. A rising number of warriors have been exposed to traumatic events, she said.

‘‘There’s going to be stress, there’s going to be depression, there’s going to be all kinds of other symptoms,” she said. ‘‘We now know, based on the injuries we’ve seen, that we need more case managers, we need more psychologists, we need more psychiatrists, we need more social workers, we need more nurses.”

In terms of providing quality care, she said, ‘‘you have to know when to intervene, when to support the individual at the lowest level of support needed.”

Flaherty also discussed putting together key programs encouraged them to be strong leaders to help military members and their families to mitigate and overcome stress, which is known to fracture families, she said.

Flaherty told the group how important it is to understand their role, which can allow them to be protestants against disorders and disabilities.

‘‘Strong leaders are engaged, they know about their people,” she said. ‘‘They know what the person looks like everyday ... so, if something’s off, they can intervene very early and say ‘What’s up? What’s going on? How can I help?’ ... that is critical, that can protect you from having disorders.

‘‘Be a covenant leader ... take care of your troops, take care of each other. Make sure you understand how people are doing because what may not stress you may stress somebody else.”

It is the leaders of organizations and the Navy who can help us change all of this, she said.

Watkins, who enlisted in the Navy in 1976, talked to the group about Safe Harbor, which he began working with in January 2008. At that time, the program served 145 sailors, Watkins said. That number quickly grew to more than 6,000.

Watkins explained that Safe Harbor helps wounded Sailors, as well as members of the U.S. Coast Guard, to afford their non-medical needs, such as home improvements.

The organization helps find jobs and physical activities, Watkins said. It also assigns each wounded sailor to a care manager, who makes sure they are receiving what they need.

Wright, who joined the Navy in the 1980s, began working for Safe Harbor at the same time as Watkins. He gave the group an overview of a structure used by the organization and throughout military training known as the Stress Continuum Model, which helps simplify finding care for wounded warriors.

The model classifies service members according to the level of care they need on a green to red spectrum, grouping ‘‘ready” in the green and ‘‘ill” in the red, he said.

‘‘The goal is really keeping folks in the green and using this approach, I think we’re on the path to getting it that way.”