I've been doing that for years it's so annoying
This is honestly the only way I want to communicate in the facility wide chats. I will adopt this approach. I want people to know that I'm a burnt out millennial who has lost the ability to speak in full sentences. Bother me at your own risk.
That is definitely Barefoot. The pinot grigio got me through grad school. Now I'm classy and spent slightly more than $6 a bottle on wine.
It is consistent with the current workplace theme complete with nonsensical daily virtual 'safety' check-in meetings (infantilization), obsession with concrete tasks of moving virtual 'blocks' (MH Suite problems/goals/objectives/interventions) around the playpen, and daily spankings.
No personal experiences but if you plan well in advance and especially if you can offer something positive in return (eg I’m happy to work the regular Thanksgiving week schedule and can help with clinical coverage that week), I think your supervisor will be more likely to help you with this process.
Your probationary status should have no impact here. If it is a religious holiday in which your religion does not allow you to work, your boss pretty much has to allow you to do "religious compensatory time," within reason. Many managers, and even timekeepers are unfamiliar with this as it was a new policy rolled out under the trump admin for all feds in 2019, and my guess is, very underutilized. I had multiple bosses greenlight it just fine once they learned what it was. If it is a religious holiday where your faith does technically permit you to be at work, YMMV, but your newbie status shouldn't matter.
Which would mean that the current status quo would likely persist until then?
I no longer work at VA, but based on what I've seen/heard, that's what I'd assume until proven otherwise. I do think trainee recruitment events may still be occurring, though.
I'm callin' it now. We ain't seen NUTHIN yet. The current 'shortfall' is the leading edge of a massive storm that--given the status quo--is going to roll over the entire organization in the coming years.
As the current system becomes arithmetically impossible to sustain, the political posturings and shenanigans (from all involved) will not fail to entertain.
If things are going to hurt more for clinicians, I hope this happens across the board so that supervisors are also experiencing these day to day realities so they can hopefully be a bit more realistic in their expectations while having a more vested stake in what happens.
Hasn't happened at my site. Probably won't, either. I'd love it if the 'higher ups' in the org would start analyzing relevant stats on this in relation to 'access' issues and wait times. My guess is there's probably a lot of site-to-site variability. One relevant stat would be percentage of licensed MH staff (LCSW, PhD/PsyD, LMFT, etc.) who COULD be providing clinical services or bearing caseloads, but who aren't. At my site, for example, I think that something like less than 10% of mental health LCSWs actually provide therapy. The vast majority of therapists are exclusively PhDs/PsyDs. It is rare to encounter an LCSW with a clinical caseload even though we employ tons of LCSWs. If there are 'access' issues for psychotherapy and we are being discouraged from sending people to community care and can't re-fill positions lost to attrition...then why can't an LCSW shoulder a mini-caseload and at least see patients one or two days per week? What are they doing otherwise (in terms of nonclinical duties) that is higher priority than providing care to patients? I thought our highest priority was 'eliminating suicide.'
Eh, I have friends that are or have been managers and dept chiefs. The directives are not coming from them. Frankly, they have no interest in creating more paperwork for themselves when employees fight back. They are just between a rock and a hard place. The question becomes how much of a backbone that particular person happens to have and can afford to have.
Cool. If the people in those positions would successfully fight/resist seeing patients one or two days per week (God forbid!) then maybe we can just eliminate their position in the future when we encounter successively larger budget shortfalls in the years to come.
Honestly, I am of two minds with regard to this and I don't think this will work well. I know the dynamics are your site are different from mine and the LCSW vs psychologist issues there not anything I have encountered. That said, VA really only has two types of folks they can 'squeeze' to do more work. Those that qualify for the FERS .08 percent pension and are above age 45 and under age 57 and younger folks getting $200k reimbursed through EDRP. If you are not one of those two folks, you have plenty of comparable non-VA options if the job is no longer cushy or it will simply be time to avail yourself of that government early retirement.
The Hill article is damning. Part of the problem is the VA pays service connection for normal aging related illnesses, illnesses associated with obesity, and other things that have zero to do with military service. As the article articulates, there is also encouragement to remain sick, probably inadvertently. There has always been a problem on the mental health issue due to difficulty in verification. But veterans are coached in how to maximize service connection, e.g., 8 Ways to Increase Your VA Disability Rating (The Insider’s Guide). It is viewed as another retirement benefit by many.
And what's even worse than the damning year-to-year numbers (which the Hill article references) is what I guess I would call an 'insider's front-line perspective' as a clinician who has worked (for a time) both as a full-time C&P examiner and as a full-time outpatient psychotherapist at VA. I have become intimately familiar with the specifics of the organizational dysfunction rife in both of those contexts as well as the absolute and utter refusal of the higher ups in the organization's willingness to acknowledge the existence of (let alone begin to attempt to address) these issues.
I don’t have one now but I had one at a previous VA where we were all working remotely. I had people text me occasionally but usually I did not tell them it was a cell phone. And I never responded to texts. I used Doximity more often though which you can set to display your facility # instead of your VA cell.
