It's 2100 and you've got six NCOER bullets due by tomorrow morning — one of them for your senior medic, and you're staring at a blank line trying to turn "she ran sick call and kept the aid station squared away" into something a rater will actually approve. Combat medic NCOERs are some of the hardest to write because 68W duties don't always translate cleanly into the leadership-and-impact language AR 623-3 wants to see. Here's how to fix that.
Why 68W NCOER Bullets Are Different
Most MOS-specific NCOER guidance focuses on maneuver or logistics tasks — rounds fired, vehicles maintained, convoys run. Combat medic work doesn't fit that mold. A 68W's day might include triage, sick call management, combat lifesaver training, medical readiness tracking, and behavioral health referrals, all in the same shift. The challenge when you write NCOER bullets for 68W Soldiers is translating clinical and administrative competence into the same measurable, leadership-focused language the rest of the NCOER uses. A bullet that just says "provided medical care to Soldiers" tells the board nothing. A bullet that quantifies patient volume, readiness impact, or training reach tells them everything.
What Raters Look For in a Combat Medic NCOER
Regardless of MOS, AR 623-3 and FM 6-22 evaluate Soldiers against the same core attributes: Character, Presence, Intellect, and the three competencies — Leads, Develops, Achieves. For 68Ws, the strongest bullets usually land in Achieves (mission and readiness outcomes) and Develops (training other Soldiers as combat lifesavers or junior medics). A few things raters consistently want to see:
- A number — patients treated, CLS certifications issued, profiles processed, or medical readiness percentage improved.
- A clear outcome — fewer non-deployable Soldiers, faster sick call throughput, zero missed medications during a field exercise.
- Scope — was this one platoon, the whole company, or a battalion-level medical readiness push?
It also helps to think about where the bullet fits in the DA Form 2166-9-2 rating scheme before you write it. A senior medic managing sick call throughput and supervising junior 68Ws belongs in Leads and Achieves. A medic building CLS classes or mentoring a new combat medic through their EFMB prep fits Develops. Sorting the accomplishment into the right bucket first makes the actual sentence much easier to write, because you already know which verb and which outcome to lead with.
A Real 68W NCOER Bullet, Broken Down
Here's what it looks like when those elements come together in a single bullet:
This works because it opens with an action verb, includes a hard number (32 Soldiers, 14 days), and closes with a measurable readiness outcome the rater can defend at the board. It also implicitly shows Develops and Achieves without having to say either word — the numbers do the talking. That's the pattern to follow any time you sit down to write NCOER bullets for 68W combat medics: verb, quantity, timeframe, outcome.
Common Mistakes to Avoid
The most common error is writing a duty description instead of an achievement — "responsible for aid station operations" describes a job, not a result. Fix it by asking "so what happened because of that?" and putting the answer in the bullet. The second mistake is skipping numbers entirely because medical work can feel hard to quantify; almost everything a medic does can be counted — patients seen, supplies inventoried, Soldiers screened, minutes shaved off a MEDEVAC response. The third mistake is burying a genuinely strong training accomplishment in vague language instead of leading with the metric that proves it happened. A fourth, more subtle mistake: copying a bullet template from an infantry or logistics NCO and swapping in medical terms. The structure works, but medical-specific outcomes — readiness rates, response times, patient throughput — read more credibly than generic phrases like "provided excellent medical support" ever will.
Final Thoughts
Combat medics carry some of the most mission-critical, hardest-to-quantify work in a formation, and their NCOERs should reflect that with the same precision they bring to patient care. If you're staring down a stack of evaluations tonight, NCO Kit's free NCOER Bullet Builder can take a plain-language description of what your medic actually did and turn it into an AR 623-3 aligned bullet in seconds — including a heads-up if it fits a different attribute better than the one you picked. Try it at NCO Kit.