Environmental Health Technician – Preventative Medicine
Veterans Health Administration - Department of Veterans Affairs
MINIMUM QUALIFICATIONS SPECIALIZED EXPERIENCE: GS-08: Possess one year of specialized experience that required application of the knowledge, methods, and techniques of this position. To be creditable, specialized experience must have been equivalent to at least the GS-07 grade level. Specialized experience involves Experience that involved identifying, preventing, or eliminating health hazards in one or more areas of environmental sanitation. Such experience must have provided a practical knowledge of environmental health hazards, survey techniques, and control and eradication methods, and may have been gained in work such as biological technician, medical technician, pest control technician, quality control positions with dairy or food service industries, or environmental health worker. Journey level experience in a trade or craft may be credited as specialized experience when the work was closely associated with and provided the required knowledge of environmental health techniques, methods, and skills, e.g., pest control operator, water plant operator. Specialized experience also includes interviewing patients with communicable diseases and their contacts, experience implementing the Sexually Transmitted Disease (STD) Surveillance Program, the Tuberculosis Surveillance and Control Program. Administers the tuberculin skin test (TST) for civilian and active-duty members, performs the final TST interpretation and records results in the electronic medical records. Refers patients for follow-up X-Ray, Assists the Rabies Control Program, coordination of bite report completion with the emergency medical services, plans, delivers, and evaluates health education classes for active-duty members and their commanders, military and civilian supervisors and their staff, health care workers, assists all inspection, interview, and data collection/reporting activities related to food-borne illness outbreak investigations. Conducts initial and periodic screening of electronic medical records of healthcare workers, reviewing immunization and tuberculosis screening status, as applicable, protects database information compliance with Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) Privacy Act precautions. This experience must be detailed in your resume to receive credit. OR EDUCATION SUBSTITUTION: Possess one and a half years of graduate education that is directly related to the work of this position. One year of full-time graduate education is the number of credit hours that the school attended has determined to represent 1 year of full-time study. Transcripts required. OR COMBINATION OF EDUCATION AND EXPERIENCE: Possess an equivalent combination of specialized experience and graduate education as described above that demonstrates your ability to perform the duties of this position. Experience must be detailed, and transcripts required. Transcripts required. You will be rated on the following Competencies as part of the assessment questionnaire for this position: Computer Skills Customer Service (Clerical/Technical) Interpersonal Skills Teamwork Technical Competence IMPORTANT: A full year of work is considered to be 35-40 hours of work per week. All experience listed on your resume must include the month and year start/end dates. Part-time experience will be credited on the basis of time actually spent in appropriate activities. Applicants wishing to receive credit for such experience must indicate clearly the nature of their duties and responsibilities in each position and the number of hours a week spent in such employment. Experience refers to paid and unpaid experience, including volunteer work done through National Service programs (e.g., Peace Corps, AmeriCorps) and other organizations (e.g., professional; philanthropic; religious; spiritual; community; student; social). Volunteer work helps build critical competencies, knowledge, and skills and can provide valuable training and experience that translates directly to paid employment. You will receive credit for all qualifying experience, including volunteer experience. Physical Requirements: The work consists of some physical activities that require long periods of standing, considerable use of your arms and legs and moving your whole body, such as climbing, recurring lifting of moderately heavy items (weighing under 50 pounds [e.g., lifting and carrying applicable test equipment, data collection and monitoring devices, or sample trays]), balancing, walking over rough, uneven, or rocky surfaces; recurring bending, crouching, stooping, stretching, reaching, or similar activity; and handling materials. The work environment for the employee may include a mix of office, laboratory, and/or field work. For more information on these qualification standards, please visit the United States Office of Personnel Management’s website at https://www.opm.gov/policy-data-oversight/classification-qualifications/general-schedule-qualification-standards/.
These positions are located within the Fleet Medicine Directorate, Public Health Department in the Preventive Medicine Division, located at the Captain James A. Lovell Federal Health Care Center (FHCC), North Chicago, Illinois.