Program Support Assistant

Description:

This position is located in the Department of Veterans Affairs, at the Charles George VA Medical Center in Asheville, North Carolina, under the Surgery Service. The primary purpose of this position is to provide administrative support and assistance for the service's Ongoing Professional Practice Evaluation (OPPE) and Focused Professional Practice Evaluation (FPPE) programs.

Requirements:

To qualify for this position, applicants must meet all requirements by the closing date of this announcement, 02/06/2026.

Time-In-Grade Requirement : Applicants who are current Federal employees and have held a GS grade any time in the past 52 weeks must also meet time-in-grade requirements by the closing date of this announcement. For a GS-7 position you must have served 52 weeks at the GS-6. The grade may have been in any occupation, but must have been held in the Federal service. An SF-50 that shows your time-in-grade eligibility must be submitted with your application materials. If the most recent SF-50 has an effective date within the past year, it may not clearly demonstrate you possess one-year time-in-grade, as required by the announcement. In this instance, you must provide an additional SF-50 that clearly demonstrates one-year time-in-grade.

You may qualify based on your experience and/or education as described below:

• Specialized Experience: Do you possess at least one (1) full year of specialized experience that equipped you with the knowledge, skills, and abilities to successfully perform the duties the Program Support Assistant at the full performance level (GS-7), and that is typically in or related to the position to be filled. To be creditable, specialized experience must have been equivalent to at least the next lower grade level (GS-6) in the Federal service. Specialized experience includes experience where you were responsible for providing administrative support functions within a healthcare facility; experienced Managing the Surgery Package for the Surgery Department to present reports or combination of routines to create complex reports from the Surgery Package; Implementing effective Problem Solving skills and overall knowledge of VISTA applications; Troubleshooting all error messages and malfunctions of all OR software and packages supported or used within the Surgical Service; Advanced knowledge of various software applications to include Dragon Speak, MS Excel, Access, Word and PowerPoint to effectively be able to advise staff as needed; Ability to retrieve periodic data and statistical reports and prepare correspondence by collecting and releasing data relevant to surgical medical and clinical activities and workload; Experience building and posting daily OR schedules and overseeing all aspects of the OR scheduling processes; Experience serving as a Timekeeper, initiating and maintaining all required records; and other functions within the Surgical or similar clinical environments within the VA Healthcare system. NOTE: Experience must be fully documented on your resume and must include job title, duties, month and year start/end dates AND hours worked per week.

You will be rated on the following Competencies for this position:

1. Information Management
2. Data Management
3. Knowledge Management
4. Computer Skills
5. Customer Service

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; religions; 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.

Note : A full year of work is considered to be 35-40 hours of work per week. 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.

Physical Requirements: he work is mostly sedentary, however, walking and stair climbing, bending, stooping, and carrying light weight documents, folders and manual are required.

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/ .