Postal and Federal Disability Retirement: Knowing the Terms

In preparing, formulating and filing a Federal Disability Retirement application with the Office of Personnel Management, it is important to have some clarity on conceptualizations of physical and psychiatric medical conditions or, to put it quite simply, to “know your terms”.  

While one must obviously obtain the necessary medical documentation in order to meet the eligibility requirements for OPM Disability Retirement benefits, and such medical documentation — a narrative report providing for the “bridge” between one’s medical condition and the particular type of duties and positional requirements one is engaged in with the Federal government or the Postal Service, as well as office notes, treatment notes, etc. — reliance upon the medical documentation to expand upon, delineate, explain, illustrate and elucidate upon the narrative story of how the medical condition impacts upon one’s inability to perform one or more of the essential elements of one’s job, may be expecting too much from the doctor and medical documentation itself.  

On the Applicant’s Statement of Disability (Standard Form 3112A), there is an opportunity for the Applicant to provide information concerning the impact of one’s medical condition upon the essential elements of one’s job, as well as upon one’s personal life.

Knowing the “medical jargon” and being able to extrapolate, apply, expand upon, and describe in terms which are cohesive, understandable, illustrative, and with sufficient emotive impact, yet maintaining a sense of rational perspective and sequential, logical application, is an important part of providing useful information to the Office of Personnel Management.

Keeping it simple is important, but at the same time being able to use the medical terms comfortably in describing the impact upon one’s positional duties, in a technical but comprehensible manner, is the key to effective communication.  For, after all, “communication” is what this is all about — of presenting a case which is persuasive to the Office of Personnel Management.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire