Graduate medical education in the Department of Defense

The Department of Defense supports over 3,000 physician trainees in graduate medical education (GME) programs in military hospitals located throughout the United States. The number of trainees has been gradually declining over the past 5 years because of budget constraints and the personnel draw-down in the military that are results of the end of the Cold War. The Department of Defense has developed a GME strategy for determining the proper size of its GME programs. The tenets of the GME strategy include closing GME programs that do not fill trainee positions and that are not of the highest quality in accordance with Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education standards, ensuring that the number of GME trainees does not exceed one-quarter of the total number of the active duty physicians in the Department of Defense, and minimizing the number of civilian trainees in military hospital GME programs.