Nidal Hasan Psychiatric Review: Nidal Hasan Residency Review: Nidal Hasan Performance Review

Nidal Hasan, the shooter in the Fort Hood murders, received a damning review from the program director of the Psychiatry Residency Training program at Walter Reed Medical Center.

Nidal Hasan

According to National Public Radio (NPR), Major Scott Moran wrote a letter to the "Credentials Committee" at several military hospitals, including Walter Reed, a Naval medical center and an Air Force medical center. The subject of the memo was" Cpt. Nidal Hasan" and is dated May 17, 2007. Moran says the memo "is based on my personal knowledge of and the doucmented incidences in Cpt. Hasan's Resident Training File.

Readers: If you know of any White or Black soldier that would be promoted to the rank of Major, make your story good, because I don't think I'll believe it. 

CNN published the like to NPR's transcript with this note at the top of the memo:

[Editor's Note: This is a transcript of the memo obtained by NPR. It is not a facsimile or PDF of the actual document].

 And CNN includes this disclaimer:

CNN could not corroborate the authenticity of the memo nor reach Moran for comment. Last week, Moran said he could not comment about differing accounts of Hasan's behavior and disciplinary record.

 Here's pertinent portions of the memo (or read the NPR transcript):

The Faculty has serious concerns about CPT Hasan’s professionalism and work ethic. Clinically he is competent to deliver safe patient care. But he demonstrates a pattern of poor judgment and a lack of professionalism.

In his PGY-2 year, he was counseled for inappropriately discussing religious topics with his assigned patients. He also required a period of in-program remediation when he was discovered to have not documented appropriately an ER encounter with a homicidal patient who subsequently eloped from the ER. He did successfully remediate this problem.

At the end of his PGY-2 year, he was placed on administrative probation by the NCC GMEC for failure to take and pass USMLE Step 3 and to obtain an unrestricted state medical license by the end of his PGY-2 year; as a result he was not promoted to PGY-3 on time. He did eventually complete step 3 and get a license and was promoted to PGY-3.

He was counseled for having a poor record of attendance at didactics and lower than expected PRITE scores. One year he failed to show for his PRITE examination at all. During his PGY-3 year, he was counseled for being consistently late to NNMC morning report.

During his PGY-4 year, he was discovered to have only seen 30 outpatients in 38 week of outpatient continuity clinic. He was required to make this missed clinic time up using his elective. He failed his HGT/WGT screening and was found to be out of standards with body fat % and was counseled on that.

Lastly, he missed a night of call for MGMC ER and then did not respond to
numerous pages by my office the next day. 

4. Take together; these issues demonstrate a lack of professionalism and work ethics. He is able to self-correct with supervision. However, at this point he should not need so much supervision. In spite of all of this, I am not able to say he is not competent to graduate nor do I think a period of academic probation now at the end of his training will be beneficial. He would be able to contain his behavior enough to complete any period of probation successfully.

My purpose in writing this letter is to give the credentials committee the benefit of full disclosure and the opportunity to modify CPT Hasan’s plan of supervision following initial privileging. 

5. I did discuss this memo with CPT Hasan and informed him I would be adding it to his initial credentialing paperwork.

Despite Maj. Moran's evaluation, Hasan was promoted from Captain to Major, sent to Fort Hood to get him away from Walter Reed, and now 14 are dead and many injured.

Read some of Hasan's more recent statements at TheLongWarJournal.