Important Guidance for Drafting Navy Non-Medical Assessments
Many Navy and Marine Corps personnel do not realize the importance of the Non-Medical Assessment prepared by your Commander when the PEB is assessing your fitness for duty. This document is actually the first item that IPEB and FPEB look at after reviewing your MEB Narrative Summary. In doing so, they are looking for specific language addressing how each of your referred conditions does or does not affect your ability to perform the duties of your MOS- both in-garrison and in afloat, deployed, or austere environments. If a condition is not addressed, the IPEB and FPEB members will make the natural assumption that it does not affect your fitness for duty.
Thus, you want to ensure that you provide your Commander with bullet points for discussion for each of your referred conditions so that they do not simply write comments as vague as “… his/her injuries do/do not affect his/her ability to perform the duties of his rate and MOS.
During the past three years the quality of the information provided to the PEB in USN/USMC Non-medical Assessments was so inadequate that the President of the PEB drafted instructions for how to draft a strong NMA to be distributed by PEBLOs to all Navy and Marine Corps Commanders whose personnel were undergoing medical boards. Unfortunately, many commands have not yet received this instruction.
With this in mind, you should ensure that your PEBLO provides a copy of this instruction to your Commander when he or she first requests that the command draft a Non-medical Assessment in your case. To assist you in doing so, I have attached a copy of the instruction to this blog post.
