Administrative Operations Officer, Department of Veterans Affairs

>> My name is Debra Ledkey [assumed spelling]. I work for the Department of Veterans' Affairs in the National Office of Academic Affiliations. My position is Administrative Operations Officer. And my particular area of focus is in the education and training of budding clinical healthcare professionals such as physicians, nurses, psychologists, social workers, pharmacists and others. These individuals come to VA as interns, residents, and fellows to take what they've learned in school and actually put that into practice and then they can go out and become professionals in their particular area of expertise. So by coming to VA, they are -- they're putting that into good practice: what they've learned in school. But they're also helping us take care of our veterans and they're also learning about our veterans. Because whether they stay at VA after they finish their training or go out into private practice or another healthcare organization, are veterans receive healthcare everywhere. So a typical day for me is very busy. So I work on a number of different programs and specifically we have about 20 different advanced fellowship programs I work with which can range from anywhere from geriatrics programs, addiction treatment, polytrauma, traumatic brain injury, all generally programs that are focused on particular needs of our veterans. So I can very easily jump from program to program and individual -- interaction with individuals both in the VA and universities across the country.