Consider what a Department-level form is for. DD Form 2351 — DD Form 2351, DoDMERB Report of Medical Examination, March 2008 — was established to DoD Medical Examination Review Board (DoDMERB) Report of Medical Examination, and it was placed in the DD sequence because the underlying transaction occurs throughout the Defense establishment in substantially the same shape. Standardizing the record was cheaper and more reliable than letting six services each design their own.
This is why the arrangement matters to you rather than only to the archivists. not stated governs the form throughout the Department, with not stated as the responsible office, so the record you create is legible outside your own component. Joint assignments, agency details and cross-service transactions all depend on that: the paperwork does not have to be reconstructed each time it crosses a boundary.
Current edition: not stated, status not stated. Understand why that date is worth attention here. When the Department reissues a form, the replacement takes effect across every component simultaneously, so an older copy is not merely locally out of date — it is out of date in every office that might receive it.
The form is laid out top to bottom in a sequence that reflects how the record will be read, not merely how it was drawn. Identification comes first because everything below it is understood in relation to a named person, unit or transaction; substantive entries follow; certification closes the document because certification attests to what precedes it. Filling out of order tends to produce internal inconsistencies — an entry that made sense before the header was settled and does not afterward.
Verify the printed edition against not stated first. Field structure shifts between editions, and the office that receives your record is reading the current one. That office may sit outside your service, which removes even the informal accommodation you might expect from a colleague who used the old version last month.
Where a specific field is genuinely unclear, the instructions printed on the form come first and not stated governs where the two do not agree.
Download the form
What you can download: PDF. The form runs 2 pages and asks for approximately 112 entries. The plurality of formats is deliberate: Defense distribution has never been able to assume one operating environment across the whole force.
Fillable and printable are not two presentations of one file but two different objects. One holds your entries as structured data within the document; the other is a static picture meant to meet a pen. Since a DD form frequently moves outside the organization that created it, the durability of the entry matters more here than on a record that stays in one drawer. Typed text reproduces indefinitely; handwriting degrades at every copy.
Xfdl appears in the set for reasons of institutional inertia rather than preference. It is the IBM Lotus Forms format, once the Department's electronic forms standard and deployed widely enough that it outlived the decision to move on. IBM Lotus Forms Viewer or an equivalent client opens it; a pdf application will not.
Nothing here is charged for. Published Defense forms are public documents and distribution carries no fee, in any format. One caution about software: fill the form in a desktop pdf application rather than a browser tab. Browser-embedded viewers implement field behaviour inconsistently, and the failure mode is silent loss of everything you entered.
What the form asks for
- This section is for DoDMERB use only.
- Applicant Data. 1. Date of examination (4 digit year, 2 digit month, 2 digit day, no dividers).
- 2. Name (last, first, middle initial).
- 3. Social security number. Do not include dashes.
- 4. Date of birth (4 digit year, 2 digit month, 2 digit day).
- 5. Age.
- 6. Sex.
- 7. Race (ethnic group/medically significant).
- 8.a. Applicant mailing address (include zip code).
- b. ROTC code, if applicable.
- 9. Status. Press space bar to mark X in first box if active duty, second box if civilian, or third box if reserve/guard.
- 10. Examiner address and facility code.
- Measurements. 11. Height (to nearest 1/4 inch). a. Standing.
- 11.b. Sitting height.
- 12. Weight (to nearest pound).
- 13. Pulse.
- 14. Blood pressure: systolic.
- Diastolic.
- 14.a. Repeat blood pressure if greater than 140/90: systolic.
- Repeat diastolic.
- Repeat pulse if greater than 99.
- 15. Audiometer. Right: 500.
- Right: 1000.
- Right: 2000.
The completed form goes to the office named in not stated or in local implementing procedure, and it is worth keeping a copy before it goes. On a Department form the destination is frequently outside your own chain — another service, a defense agency, a joint staff — and recovering a document that has crossed an organizational boundary is a slower business than retrieving one from a file down the hall.
When DD Form 2351 cites another form, the citation is self-sufficient. The DD series is a single sequence administered at Department level, so the number resolves to exactly one document without any need to establish which component issued it — a convenience that exists only because the sequence was never allowed to fork.
Procedures that touch both Department and service processes will cite forms from both sequences, and the coincidence of numbers between them is exactly that — coincidence. An Army proponent maintains the DA series for the Army; not stated or another Department office maintains the DD series for the whole Department. Two independent registries, two independent numbering runs, no correspondence at any value.
Editions change for reasons that originate above the form itself. The prescribing directive is reissued and the form follows; the information the Department needs to collect changes and the fields change with it; the statutory notice language is amended and every form carrying that notice is republished. None of these events announces itself to the person who downloaded a copy last year, which is why confirming not stated at the moment of download is the only reliable check available to you.
The role of this page is narrow and worth stating plainly. It makes a published Defense form available and explains its structure. It does not advise, does not interpret policy for your circumstances, and cannot indicate how any office will treat a completed copy — those judgments rest with the authorities that own the process. Direct such questions to not stated, to the administrative office that services you, or to the authority named in not stated.
Questions and answers
- What is DD Form 2351?
- DD Form 2351, DoDMERB Report of Medical Examination, March 2008
- Which edition is current?
- Not stated by the publisher
- Who is responsible for this form?
- Not stated
- In which formats can it be downloaded?