Department of Veterans Affairs

Health Technician

Chicago, Illinois Full time

Health Technician

Department: Department of Veterans Affairs

Location(s): Chicago, Illinois

Salary Range: $50259 - $65334 Per Year

Job Summary: This position is located in Nursing Service, and is organizationally aligned under the Jesse Brown VA Medical Center, Chicago, IL. (537) - a Level 1b Complexity VHA Facility. The position functions as a non-licensed member of the nursing care team and combines the responsibility and selected aspects of Intravenous (IV) line insertion, Phlebotomy, and 12 lead EKG, in addition to providing continuous observation of telemetry monitoring electrocardiographic (EKG) rhythms of critically ill patients.

Major Duties:

  • This position provides clinical, administrative, technical, and direct patient care support. In this capacity, the incumbent must be skillful and flexible in establishing goals and setting priorities due to the fluctuating needs of the clinical staff. Specific responsibilities include: Safely and correctly performs venous puncture to obtain a blood specimen from the patient after clearly explaining the procedure to the patient in a manner appropriate to the patient; Safely and correctly places intravenous catheter into a peripheral vein after clearly explaining the procedure to the patient in a manner appropriate to that specific patient; Attaches a patient to an EKG machine and performs a twelve lead EKG reading. Retrieves old EKG's using the MAC VU System; At the direction of the RN, correctly applies a nasal cannula to deliver oxygen, a venturi mask, and an oxygen mask; Takes vital signs and notifies the physician or nurse if any are abnormal; Performs pulse oximetry; Safely escorts patients to critical care areas; Competently assesses oxygen tanks at the beginning of each shift for oxygen availability; Delivers vital specimens to appropriate laboratories in the absence of other personnel so designated for this function; Identifies a patient in acute distress and rapidly notifies the appropriate licensed practitioner; Assists in the application of various types of restraint devices; Cleans and returns equipment to appropriate location and reports needs for equipment repair to the appropriate person; Work Schedule: 1930 to 0800 hours day can vary will discuss at interview Virtual: This is not a virtual position. Position Description/PD#: Health Technician/PD13351A

Qualifications: To qualify for this position, applicants must meet all requirements by the closing date of this announcement, 11/19/2025. 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-06 position you must have served 52 weeks at the GS-05. 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. Note: Time-In-Grade requirements also apply to former Federal employees applying for reinstatement as well as current employees applying for Veterans Employment Opportunities Act of 1998 (VEOA) appointment. Individual Occupational Requirements Specialized Experience (for positions at GS-4 and above): Positions in this series range widely in type and include support duties to medical or health personnel such as audiologists, speech pathologists, medical officers, and optometrists. Therefore, technician experience is experience that required application of the knowledge, methods, and techniques of the position to be filled. OR Education and Training For GS-5: Successful completion of a full 4-year course of study leading to a bachelor's degree, with major study or at least 24 semester hours in subjects directly related to the position. You will be rated on the following Competencies for this position: Customer Service (Clerical/Technical) Information Assurance Patient Care Technical Competence 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: 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/.

How to Apply: All applicants are encouraged to apply online. To apply for this position, you must complete the questionnaire and submit the documentation specified in the Required Documents section below. The complete application package must be submitted by 11:59 PM (ET) on 11/19/2025 to receive consideration. To preview the questionnaire click https://apply.usastaffing.gov/ViewQuestionnaire/12833458. To begin, click Apply Online to create a USA JOBS account or log in to your existing account. Follow the prompts to select your USA JOBS resume and/or other supporting documents and complete the occupational questionnaire. Click Submit My Answers to submit your application package. NOTE: It is your responsibility to ensure your responses and appropriate documentation is submitted prior to the closing date. Beginning September 27, 2025, Federal agencies will only accept resumes up to two pages in length to comply with the Merit Hiring Plan. Resumes longer than two pages will result in ineligibility for further consideration for the position. USAJOBS will not allow you to upload or build resumes longer than two pages, and you will need to update the resumes in your profile before applying for a job. Resumes should include information relevant to the knowledge, skills, abilities, and competencies of the position to which you are applying. VA is unable to make assumptions about qualifications if not clearly listed. Resumes must be legible so they can be reviewed for eligibility, minimum qualifications and other position requirements listed in the job announcement. Your resume must be 5MB or less. We recommend saving and uploading your resume as a PDF to maintain formatting and number of pages. We also accept GIF, JPG, JPEG, PNG, RTF, TXT, PDF, ODT or Word (DOC or DOCX). We do not accept PDF portfolio files. We recommend using a sans-serif font size like Lato, if available. Other widely available options are Calibri, Helvetica, Arial, Verdana, Open San Source Sans Pro, Roboto or Noro Sans. Make your page margins 0.5 inches. Consider using 14-point size font for titles and 10-point for the main text in your resume. The resume builder can help you create a resume using these recommendations and uses the information in your USAJOBS profile to help you get started. Helpful Hints for Creating a Two-Page Resume: Prioritize most relevant and recent experience Use concise, results focused language Align language from the job announcement Focus on demonstrating skills and competencies Remove outdated or unrelated experience Use the USAJOBS resume builder Additional guidance on this new requirement and resume building tools can be found at: https://help.usajobs.gov/faq/application/documents/resume/page-limit https://www.opm.gov/policy-data-oversight/hiring-information/merit-hiring-plan-resources/applicant-guidance-on-the-two-page-resume-limit/ Career Transition Assistance Plan (CTAP) provide eligible displaced Federal/VA competitive service employees with selection priority over other candidates for competitive service vacancies. To be qualified you must submit appropriate documentation (a copy of the agency notice, your most recent performance rating, and your most recent SF-50 noting current position, grade level, and duty location) and be found well-qualified for this vacancy. To be well-qualified: applicants must possess experience that exceeds the minimum qualifications of the position including all selective factors, and who are proficient in most of the required competencies of the job. Information about ICTAP and CTAP eligibility is on OPM's Career Transition Resources website at http://www.opm.gov/policy-data-oversight/workforce-restructuring/employee-guide-to-career-transition/. During the application process you may have an option to opt-in to make your resume available to hiring managers in the agency who have similar positions. Opting in does not impact your application for this announcement, nor does it guarantee further consideration for additional positions.

Application Deadline: 2025-11-19