Graduate Medical Education, 2008-2009

THEAMERICANMEDICALASSOCIAtion(AMA)andtheAssociation of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) maintain a database of informationongraduatemedical education(GME)trainingprogramsaccredited by the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) and of the residents and fellows in them. Every springthisdatabaseofresidentsisupdated byadding to it theapproximately19 000 newresidentswhomatch intoprograms throughtheNationalResidentMatching Program (NRMP) as well as from information collected through the AAMC’s follow-upreportofmedical schools.The AMA and the AAMC also jointly administer the annual National GME Census through GME Track, an Internet-based AAMCproduct.FromMay2008untilDecember2008alldirectorsofprogramsaccredited by the ACGME were asked to complete theCensusonGMETrack. Information about the training programs supplied by the program directors is uploaded to FREIDA Online, an Internetbasedpublic informationsourceonGME programsthat isavailable tomedical studentsandresidents. In July2008wesurveyed program directors about their active, transferred,andgraduatedresidents andfellowsforacademicyear2008-2009. Programdirectorswereprovidedwithlists of residentsand fellows fromthecurrent database and were asked to confirm or modifythetrainingstatusof traineeswho were present in their programs the prior year;addnewphysicianstotheirprogram whomwedidnotalreadyhave inourdatabase; and confirm, edit, or add demographic information. This demographic informationincludessex,dateandcountry of birth, citizenship status, and race/ ethnicity. We surveyed 8694 active programs, of which 7921 (91.1%) completed the program survey and 7337 (84.4%) confirmed the status of all of their active physicians-in-training, accounting for 100 751 (93.1%) active trainees. An additional 127 programs (1.5%) confirmed some but not all of their trainees (4925 trainees, 4.6%), 179 confirmed that they did not have any trainees (2.1%), 284 programs (3.3%) confirmed the status of non-active trainees (graduates and transfers) but did not have any currently active trainees, and 767 programs (8.8%) did not confirm the status of any physician training in the program (including 586 programs that apparently did not have any active trainees). A total of 96.9% of all physicians in our database had their status confirmed (eg, active, graduated, transferred, withdrawn). Physicians whose status was not confirmed were “advanced” into the next year of training (n=2500 2.3% of active residents) or “graduated” based on expected graduation date (n=1479 4.0% of graduated residents and fellows). In total, we estimate that therewere108 176active residents in ACGME-accredited programs during the 2008-2009 academic year.