More than 200 doctors are now working as physician trainees at Hawaii hospitals, according to the University of Hawaii John A. Burns School of Medicine.

The medical school, in partnership with Hawaii’s major teaching hospitals, is helping to address the state’s worsening physician shortage by putting 230 doctors to work every year as trainees in its Graduate Medical Education (GME) program.

As many as 80 percent of the doctors who graduate from JABSOM in combination with the number of physician trainees who complete GME program here, stay in Hawaii to practice, according to the Association of American Medical Colleges.

This yearʻs new GME Residency and Fellowship training began on July 1. throughout the country. The new physician trainees, both Hawaii medical school graduates and physicians from other accredited American medial colleges, are matched into residency programs at local hospitals every March, in a process governed by the National Medical Resident Matching Program.

After residency, experienced medical doctors seeking even further specialization may also enter fellowships at Hawaii hospitals. The residency and fellowship programs last between three to seven years.

This year’s program brought medical doctors from as far as Venezuela, Jordan and the Caribbean.

“I am joining the Cardiovascular Medicine Fellowship Program, said medical doctor Ammaar El Sergany in a news release.

“I’m very excited about that and I always wanted to do it so it’s great to be here. I finished residency and went and worked as a hospitalist for four years, and now I am finally living the dream and finishing a cardiovascular fellowship.

“I went to Ross Medical School in the Caribbean and did my residency in New York and Brooklyn, which was a great experience as well. So it’s taken me all around and now down here in Hawaii, I don’t think I am going to go anywhere after that.”