Never stop learning: Continuing education opportunities at VA

It’s often said you should factor in the value of the benefits you’re offered as an employee to come up with a real valuation of your earnings. Aside from the honor and gratitude I feel from helping our Veterans, one of the things that make a job with VHA great is the wealth of benefits VA employees enjoy. Specifically, I want to talk about the VA health system’s education and training organization, the Employee Education System (EES).

EES delivers important learning opportunities to Veterans Health Administration (VHA) employees that help enhance their clinical skills and contribute to continuing education credits/hours needed for state requirements and to maintaining licensure. EES holds 14 national and three state accreditations for continuing education in the health care profession, and has recently been awarded as a provider of continuing education by the American Academy of Physician Assistants (AAPA).

The AAPA accreditation, which benefits physician assistants (PAs), brings the number of national accreditations that EES manages for VHA to 15.

From an article in VHA’s EES newsletter, The Weekly Educator (Feb. 15, 2016): AAPA is the national professional society for PAs, representing more than 100,000 certified members, “across all medical and surgical specialties in all 50 states, the District of Columbia, all U.S. territories with the exception of Puerto Rico) and the uniformed services. AAPA advocates and educates on behalf of the profession and the patients PAs serve. AAPA works to ensure the professional growth, personal excellence and recognition of PAs.”

As of December 2015, there were 2,035 PAs employed by VHA. And now, all of them can earn AAPA continuing education credits three different ways: via a face-to-face format, distance learning (e.g., online, via satellite broadcast, phone), or independent distance learning where no faculty is actively engaging the learner during the course either online, by CD or through written text (e.g., article, self-study manual).

So not only is VHA the Nation’s largest provider of graduate medical education and a major contributor of medical research, but we provide the mechanism to keep our employees at the top of their game.

If you’d like to be a part of the organization that employs over 300,000 people who work in the health system, know you’ll be supported personally and professionally by EES and the other benefits of working with VA. When you work here, you’ll have a comfortable salary, outstanding benefits and great work-life balance. Take a closer look at VA opportunities and Join VA.