What is a letter of counseling?
Its an LOC and basically stops any advance. He could have done worse and given a referral which tells the military the buck stops here.
Here is a letter he got. It mostly says that Army Chief of Staff General Casey is not in his chain of command, which is correct since Chief of Staffs do not have a command. They are in an advisory role to the President. I would not expect the doctor to know, but there is a certain poster and troll who swore to me and a few others once upon a time that the Chief of Naval Operations was in the chain of command. That's pretty ignorant coming from someone who claimed to be a career naval JAG officer.