The ASU Shufeldt School of Medicine MD program

Five longitudinal threads, strands that run through the whole program, organize teaching for both degrees. Foundations of medicine takes a systems-based approach to the biomedical sciences and patient care. Clinical skills and anatomy brings hands-on practice. Medical engineering runs from biomedical signals to AI applications. Health humanities explores ethics, equity and the human experience of health, and health systems science prepares you to improve the quality, efficiency and equity of care.

The school describes pre-clerkship teaching as small-group active learning, in interactive classrooms built for team-based and case-based learning. Patient stories, explored in humanities discussions and in reflection, tie the science to real patients' lives and circumstances. Among its teaching tools the school lists mixed reality labs, digital patient avatars and point-of-care ultrasound (POCUS), meaning ultrasound scanning done by the clinician at the bedside.

In select courses, students on ASU's stand-alone MS in Medical Engineering learn alongside the medical students, as clinical and engineering teams do in practice. In the clerkship and post-clerkship phases, teaching is planned to move into HonorHealth hospitals and clinics. About 200 HonorHealth clinicians have joined the school's faculty to help develop the curriculum and teach.

A school policy limits the pre-clerkship workload. Scheduled sessions across all courses can total no more than 28 hours a week, and out-of-class assignments are capped at 28 hours a week. Course directors must submit the predicted time each assignment takes. Two to three half-days a week are left unscheduled, which the school notes are useful for routine medical or wellness visits.

You are expected at every session and exam. You can, though, request seven flex half-days a year, the school's term for approved personal time, with no more than two in a calendar month and at least 30 days' notice. They cannot be used on exam days, in standardized patient, skills lab or simulation sessions, or during one-week courses such as Becoming a Physician-Engineer. In the clinical phases the allowance is two flex days a year.

Anatomy belongs to the clinical skills and anatomy thread, which the school describes as hands-on learning with extended reality (XR) technology, medical imaging, standardized patients and early outpatient experience. It is also one of the biomedical sciences in the pre-clerkship organ-systems curriculum.

Your own computer must be able to run three digital anatomy platforms: VH Dissector Pro, Alensia HoloAnatomy and Complete Anatomy. The Mercado building has anatomy and procedural training suites, and the 2028 headquarters is planned to include an anatomy laboratory.

Patient contact is planned from the first year. The school describes regular outpatient and health-system experiences through HonorHealth from year 1, exposing you both to patient care and to engineering applied in practice. Alongside them, you practice clinical skills with standardized patients in the clinical skills and anatomy thread.

Community work starts early too. The first class's weeklong orientation in July 2026 included a panel on the state of health in Arizona and a talk from the Justa Center on older adults experiencing homelessness. Service-learning continues in the innovation weeks.

Full-time clinical work begins with the clerkship phase, after 16 months. Every attending physician (the senior doctor responsible for a patient) who supervises you must hold a faculty appointment at the school. Residents and fellows, doctors still in specialty training, must complete training on the school's objectives and policies. When you write in a patient's record, such as a progress note, your supervisor reviews and countersigns it and gives you feedback.

Throughout both degrees you are assessed against seven competency areas, from patient care and professionalism to technology application and innovation, which covers applying AI, data science and engineering design to clinical problems. Under the school's grading policy, every pre-clerkship MD course is pass/fail. Clerkships and the post-clerkship sub-internships, selectives and electives are graded Honors, Pass or Fail, with Honors for exceptional performance against criteria in each syllabus. A Fail is recorded only after all retakes and remediation are used up, and passing through either caps your grade at Pass.

Clinical progress is tracked through 15 entrustable professional activities (EPAs), essential tasks you must learn to perform with less and less supervision. Faculty rate each on a five-point scale, from 0 (observe only) to 4 (minimal guidance required), mainly by watching you in clinical, simulated and engineering settings. Ratings start in year 1 and are formative, meaning feedback rather than grades. A Clinical Competency Committee reviews them to judge when you are ready for each next phase.

Before graduating you must pass the Clinical Competency Assessment (CCA), a comprehensive clinical skills exam using standardized patients. You can schedule it only after meeting the required EPA benchmarks, and it is held in the post-clerkship phase so that anyone who falls short has time to remediate. If you are referred for remediation and do not pass it, your case goes to the Student Promotions Committee, the faculty group that rules on progress.

The USMLE is the three-step exam series used for medical licensure in the United States. Step 1 tests the sciences basic to medicine and has been reported pass/fail since January 26, 2022. Step 2 CK tests clinical knowledge and keeps a three-digit score. School policy requires you to complete the clerkship phase before attempting either, take Step 1 before the post-clerkship phase starts, and take Step 2 CK by August 31 of your final year.

In August 2026 the USMLE program announced a move to designated testing dates from January 2029, with Step exams offered less often each year. Its June 2026 announcement had set the change for 2028. On the current schedule, a student entering in 2027 would finish clerkships around the end of 2029. Step 1 would then fall around the turn of 2029 to 2030, under the new model, and Step 2 CK would be due by August 31, 2030.

These dates are worked out from the published phase lengths. The USMLE says it will publish each year's testing dates more than a year in advance.

• Pre-clerkship retakes: you get up to three attempts at any summative exam or assignment, meaning one that counts toward passing the course. A passed exam retake counts as 70%, retake attempts stay off your transcript, and a course failed after three attempts must be retaken, likely by repeating the year.
• Required clerkships of four weeks or more include a formal mid-clerkship assessment, and every clerkship, elective and selective ends with a written narrative assessment.
• If your Step 1 readiness is not safely in the passing range by the end of Flex Time, you can request up to 12 extra weeks of study. You drop your first post-clerkship rotation and take an independent study elective worth up to eight credits.
• If you fail Step 1, you finish your current post-clerkship rotation, then pause coursework until you resit. A second failure means an academic leave of absence, of up to a year, until you pass.
• You need a passing Step 2 CK score before the school certifies you for the Match, the national process run by the National Resident Matching Program (NRMP) that places graduates in residency programs. Otherwise the school may have to withdraw your name.
• The Student Promotions Committee may consider dismissal if you fail more than three pre-clerkship courses, fail a course twice, or do not pass Step 1 or Step 2 CK in time. You must be eligible to graduate within six academic years, excluding approved leave.
• Generative AI tools may support studying, brainstorming, summarizing and drafting unless a course director says otherwise, but must not replace your own knowledge, reasoning or skill. They are banned in exams unless explicitly allowed, any use must be cited, and patient data must not be entered unless authorized.

HonorHealth, a locally owned nonprofit health system, is the school's primary clinical affiliate. It is planned to host most of your clinical training, with rotations in hospitals throughout Phoenix, Scottsdale and surrounding communities. Under the 2024 affiliation agreement, HonorHealth agreed to make its inpatient hospitals and outpatient facilities available, and every HonorHealth hospital where students rotate will be designated one of the school's official teaching hospitals.

Accounts of HonorHealth's size differ. The school's clinical affiliates page describes nine acute-care hospitals, 17,000 team members, 4,000 medical staff and more than 3 million patients a year, plus a medical group, a cancer care network and clinical research. HonorHealth's own page for visiting medical students calls it a five-hospital system. Its chief executive has also listed a behavioral health hospital, a rehabilitation hospital and primary and urgent care clinics among the settings open to students.

The school says you will have access to HonorHealth's 19 graduate medical education programs, the residencies and fellowships that train doctors after medical school. For pediatric training, the school describes a growing relationship with Phoenix Children's, with rotations in general pediatrics and in subspecialties such as pediatric oncology, cardiology and surgery. ASU's president has said the university will not run its own hospital, so clinical training is planned in partner health systems.

New sites are being added. St. Vincent de Paul opened its East Valley Medical Clinic in Mesa in October 2026, giving primary care to uninsured and underserved adults and children, with ASU Health among its community partners. ASU will provide faculty and clinicians, and the clinic will become a training site for student teams from across ASU Health, including the Shufeldt School. In May 2026, ASU News also reported that HonorHealth had received a rural health care grant and was developing a curriculum for it with ASU.

For getting around, the school says that although greater Phoenix has public transportation, a car may be more convenient for reaching classes and clinical sites. ASU has a graduate housing complex in downtown Phoenix, and many private apartment complexes are nearby.

Alongside its required rotations, the post-clerkship phase lets you personalize your training with electives, selectives and advanced clerkships. Electives are rotations you choose, and school policies refer to both clinical and research electives.

Elective planning starts in year 3, when you choose a specialty advisor. With advance permission you can take up to five days away from a four-week elective, though a course director may set a lower limit, which must be listed in the elective course catalog.

The dual degree is built in, so there is nothing extra to apply for. You are admitted to the MS in Medical Engineering automatically with your acceptance to the school and complete it within the four years. The MS is a 30-credit-hour degree run by the School of Biological and Health Systems Engineering in ASU's Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering.

For medical students, ASU's degree listing sets out the 30 credits as follows. The 15-credit core is BME 501, 502, 503 and 504, Research in a Medically Integrated Experience (ReMIX, BME 515, 2 credits) and Medical Engineering Design Principles (BME 519, 1 credit). That last course prepares you for the capstone, covering regulatory considerations and market needs, and places you on a project team.

You also take Medical Engineering Design Methodology (BME 518, 2 credits), the option course for medical students. It covers the scientific method and engineering design and prepares you to apply AI through the design process in your clerkships. The rest is Capstone Research I (BME 528, 4 credits), a seminar (BME 591, 5 credits) and, as the culminating experience, Capstone Research II (BME 529, 4 credits).

ReMIX is described two ways. The school's MD/MS page calls it a four-week industry immersion in which you work with digital health companies on product design, validation and real-world testing. ASU's course catalog lists it as a 2-credit practicum, a short immersion in industry or research settings that prepares you for the capstone, graded pass/fail. The catalog lists standard grading for BME 501-504, 518, 519, 528 and 529, including the courses that run alongside the pre-clerkship phase.

Beyond the MS, students in good standing who have not previously been delayed can request a one-year special academic study leave after the clerkship phase, which the associate dean of student affairs may grant. It can be used for a dual or joint degree program, an advanced degree outside an official program, or a special program such as entrepreneurship. Winning a competitive research fellowship lets you keep full-time student status for a year, and extensions can be requested.

All student research must be registered with and reviewed by the school's Research Oversight Committee, from laboratory and data science work to quality improvement, case reports and industry projects. Approvals must be in place before work begins. The school's research areas include AI and medical engineering, mind and brain health, and tissue engineering and digital twins. The HonorHealth Research Institute, HonorHealth's research division, offers collaboration in fields such as oncology, cardiology and neurosciences.

Until its new headquarters opens, the school is based in the Mercado on ASU's Downtown Phoenix campus. The building has interactive classrooms, simulation labs, anatomy and procedural training suites and wellness spaces. The school also has its own medical library, open to Shufeldt students, faculty and staff, where a medical librarian helps with course projects, research, evidence synthesis and AI literacy.

The school is due to move into the new ASU Health headquarters in the Phoenix Bioscience Core, a 30-acre life sciences district in downtown Phoenix. ASU broke ground on April 9, 2026, and says the building is scheduled to open for the fall 2028 semester. On the current schedule, that is the last semester of a 2027 entrant's pre-clerkship phase, before clerkships begin. Plans include classrooms, study spaces, clinical skills and anatomy laboratories, exam and debrief rooms, and a simulation center recreating outpatient and inpatient operating rooms and emergency rooms.

The school describes a MedTech Innovation Suite, being developed with the Fulton Schools of Engineering, with five interconnected environments and a maker space. At its core is the Clinical AI Systems Engine (CASE), designed to link devices, imaging systems and data so teams can test technology under real clinical conditions, such as time pressure and care coordination. ASU News lists a medical-technology innovation suite among the features of the new headquarters.

Support is built around coaching. From matriculation to graduation you are paired with a professional development coach who keeps you accountable over the long term. With your coach you look back at what is and is not working, set goals, work through obstacles and find the right help. Coaches are MD and DO faculty members who can see your performance but will not assess you at any point. The coaches the school lists are HonorHealth physicians.

If you need academic help, your coach, a career advising dean or a course or clerkship director can refer you to the learning specialist, or you can refer yourself. The learning specialist trains you in study skills, efficiency and test-taking, coordinates study plans for coursework and the USMLE, and works with ASU Student Accessibility and Inclusive Learning Services on accommodations.

Career advising follows a four-year plan built on the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) Careers in Medicine program, which you can use from orientation. Year 1 brings group sessions with career advising deans and help launching student specialty interest groups. In year 3 you choose a specialty advisor, a clinician from an affiliate site, and year 4 brings personal statement and CV workshops, mock residency interviews and support through the Match.

ASU Counseling Services runs a downtown Phoenix clinic about a quarter of a mile from the school, with five mental health providers, plus round-the-clock tele-counseling and a crisis line. None of its providers teach at the school, and medical students do not rotate at student health clinics, keeping your care separate from your training. Innovation weeks include well-being workshops on sleep, nutrition and resilience.