How to Write Great Personal Impact Statements

Personal Impact Statements are strongly encouraged by PEBLOs and MSCs in order to provide you with the opportunity to describe how your various medical conditions affect you in the performance of your duties.  Sadly, many members simply draft these documents to describe their medical history, previous duty assignments and express their love for the service.  That is a mistake of tragically biblically epic dimensions.  This statement should actually be used to reemphasize points made in rebuttals or IMR/IPR requests regarding inaccuracies in your case that were not corrected by your providers as well as describing the symptoms of each condition and providing cogent examples of how each condition affects you both within and outside of the military workplace.  Your goal is to describe how each injury or condition prevents you from performing each of these activities and thereby illustrate your degree of impairment. Taking a couple of hours to draft a statement as described above will dramatically enhance the effect of this document and thereby increase your odds of obtaining a favorable outcome early on in this process.