EBP conferences with the VA, who has done one?

[JeyRo]

I just got signed up to do two weeklong, back-to-back intensive trainings on EBPs for chronic pain and dementia run by the VA. I'm already exhausted thinking about it.

Has anyone ever been part of an EBP rollout with the VA and can share what it's like? For both of these trainings I'll need to to followup conference calls and do extra documentation and followup (and get extra consultation) on specific patients afterwards.

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[psychRA]

I've done a couple, though not the ones you're doing, and I think "exhausted" pretty well sums it up

Trainings themselves are fairly intensive, and I've never even done a full week before. Even 2-3 days is pretty draining. There will be lots of handouts, powerpoints, and role playing, probably. You will get tired of sitting in the same room with the same people. And if your experience is like mine, your trainers will not end the day early under any circumstances. I don't know if it's a VA thing, but we stay until 4:30 no matter what, regardless how quickly we're getting through the material, even if that means taking a 2 hour lunch break to kill some time.

I think that the consultations calls were much more of a big deal than I had anticipated. Not because they're that work intensive, but because it's one more supervisor to deal with, and one more thing to fit into your schedule. I don't know how your calls will be formatted, but I've ended up doing weekly updates on how cases are going, and how the specific treatment was implemented. Calls have been small enough that we've each had about 10 minutes to talk, and we're also "called on" randomly to give feedback on other cases, so I actually have to focus the whole time.

Since I want to stay with the VA for the long haul, I'm hoping that having a couple of extra trainings to add to my CV will pay off in the end, but it's definitely a lot of work!