The Creighton University School of Medicine MD program

The school describes the New ERA Curriculum as integrated in two directions: vertically, by organ system, and horizontally, across disciplines. In the cardiovascular block, for example, you study the heart's structure, diseases and drugs while learning to read electrocardiograms and echocardiograms and to listen to the heart.

Formats vary by block, and year 2 puts more weight on small-group, case-based and team-based sessions. Reproductive System combines lectures and lab sessions with case-based small groups and team-based learning. Life Cycle adds pre-recorded videos and flipped classrooms, where you study the material beforehand and use class time to apply it.

In years 3 and 4 you learn mainly on clinical teams under attending physicians and residents. Pediatrics adds web-based simulated patient cases, and the fourth-year capstones return to lectures, small groups and simulation.

A handbook guideline on pre-clerkship workload, first issued in 2019 and still listed in the handbook, sets the shape of a week in years 1 and 2. Scheduled activities, including lectures, small groups, case-based and team-based learning and clinical preceptorships, average no more than 26 hours a week. Required preparation for sessions averages no more than 12 hours a week.

The timetable also leaves an average of 12 hours a week for self-study between 8 a.m. and 5 p.m., and no mandatory session runs between noon and 1 p.m.

In years 3 and 4, the school's clerkship work-hours policy, in a version revised in December 2021, sets the limits. A shift lasts at most 24 hours, plus up to four for handing over patients, and after 24 hours of call you get 14 hours off. You work no more than 80 hours a week, with one day in seven free, both averaged over four weeks.

Overnight call depends on the clerkship and hospital; an undated call guideline lists none in family medicine on either campus.

Anatomy is taught inside the pre-clerkship blocks, each covering the structures of its own system or region, and the gross anatomy lab runs through years 1 and 2. You learn by dissecting donated bodies. Under a handbook policy revised in 2024, both campuses have no more than six students per donor, four to six faculty in each scheduled lab and a standard three hours per lab.

Outside scheduled hours the lab is open for independent study, where building access allows. In Omaha, fourth-year students on the anatomy teaching practicum help prosect the donors for each session, preparing dissected specimens, and teach in the lab. Phoenix has its own practicum and a 20-station human anatomy lab, and its simulation center has Anatomage tables for virtual dissection in 3D.

In Omaha, donated bodies come through Creighton's Deeded Body Program and the Anatomical Board of the State of Nebraska. After the year the bodies spend in the lab, the program holds a memorial service where students can talk with the donors' families and share their gratitude.

Gross anatomy has lab practical exams. If you need a make-up practical, you first pass an online readiness quiz with at least 80%, then complete a supervised review of one to two hours in the lab. You get one attempt at the make-up exam, and a score below 60% means failing the course.

Anatomy returns in year 4. Gross Anatomy electives offer two or four weeks of regional study in Omaha and two weeks of regional dissection in Phoenix, and the Omaha surgery capstone includes cadaver dissection.

The school says you start seeing patients in year 1, in the simulation lab and through early inpatient and primary care experiences. The Clinical Skills Training Curriculum begins in year 1 and continues in year 2 with an Ambulatory Clinic Experience and an Early Hospital Experience. The Office of Medical Education assigns you to these pre-clerkship clinical experiences.

Community clinics add more contact. Creighton offers its health sciences students interprofessional community practice at the Magis Clinic and the Monen Healthcare Clinic at Heart Ministry Center in Omaha, and at the Virginia G. Piper Medical Clinic at St. Vincent de Paul in Phoenix. The Magis Clinic gives free care to people experiencing homelessness and people without insurance.

Full-time clinical work begins with the clerkships in May of year 3, after orientation and clinical skills training for year 3 at the end of year 2. You certify in Basic Life Support (BLS) in year 1 and in Advanced Cardiac Life Support (ACLS) in year 3, and keep both current through your clinical coursework.

Courses are graded Honors (SH), Satisfactory (SA) or Unsatisfactory (UN). In years 1 and 2, Satisfactory needs an overall course average of 70%. Between 65% and 70% you may sit a make-up exam, in up to two courses a year, and below 65% the grade is Unsatisfactory. Where a course offers Honors, its syllabus sets the criteria. At graduation, Honors in at least 50%, 60% or 75% of the courses that offer it earns cum laude, magna cum laude or summa cum laude.

Every required course gives you formative feedback, such as a quiz or practice exam, at or near its midpoint; it counts little toward grades and stays out of your MSPE. Faculty write narrative comments in small-group and lab courses, clerkships of four weeks or more and Student Interest Selectives, and each clerkship's 200-word summary goes into your MSPE.

Some subjects run through all the pre-clerkship blocks as Horizontally Integrated Disciplines. You earn no credit for them, but your scores in each are reported every semester, and you need an average of at least 65% in each by the end of year 2. Fall short and you work through a study or remediation plan, then show mastery on an exam before you sit Step 1.

Clerkship grades have two halves of 50 points. The clinical half comes mostly from your evaluators' ratings on a five-point scale, with other activities worth up to a fifth. The other half comes from your shelf percentile against national results. Honors takes 90 points and Satisfactory 70. You can retake a failed shelf within four weeks, in no more than two clerkships, but a retake rules out Honors.

USMLE Step 1 tests the science behind medicine and has been reported only as pass or fail since January 26, 2022. Step 2 CK (Clinical Knowledge) tests how you apply clinical knowledge to patient care. You sit Step 1 within the school's designated dates and must pass it to advance officially to year 3, though you can begin clerkships in May while your result is pending. You take Step 2 CK by July 1, after passing every year 3 course. Graduation requires a posted score, though not a pass.

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 named 2028. On the current schedule, a student entering in 2027 would begin Step 1 review in early March 2029 and sit the exam in late April, a few months after the switch. Step 2 CK would be due by July 1, 2030, so both exams would fall under the new model.

• These dates are projections from the 2025-26 and 2026-27 calendars, the latest the school has published.
• You must pass the school's Clinical Skills Examinations, which the grading policy calls OSCE/CSE, to graduate. An objective structured clinical examination (OSCE) is a practical exam, generally a circuit of timed stations that each test one clinical task.
• Step 1 allows three attempts, all within nine months of the end of the school's designated exam period, and a third failure means referral for dismissal. A failure reported after clerkships start takes you off your clerkship until you retake the exam.
• In every clerkship you log required clinical experiences, and a faculty member must confirm watching you take a history and examine a patient, and give you feedback halfway through.
• Graduation also requires ACLS certification and the interprofessional activities, with everything finished within six years of starting, or longer on a dual degree.
• The LCME directory, updated October 14, 2026, lists Creighton as fully accredited, with its next survey in 2027-28, and marks the program as accredited before the LCME was founded in 1942. Students in LCME-accredited MD programs are eligible to sit the USMLE.

You remain at your assigned campus for all four years, except for Creighton fourth-year electives at the other campus and away rotations. Every year 3 clerkship is at Creighton-affiliated hospitals and clinics. A lottery sets your clerkship order and fourth-year elective picks, clerkship directors assign your sites, and you cannot swap assignments with classmates.

A guideline issued in September 2026 adds that some clerkships let you rank sites, but preferences are not guaranteed, and you arrange your own transport. You can ask to move for documented health needs, family or dependent care, accessibility needs or other exceptional circumstances, though most sites run at or near capacity.

In Omaha, CHI Health is the school's primary academic health system. CHI Health Creighton University Medical Center – Bergan Mercy, a Level I trauma center, is the school's main academic medical center. University Campus, next to Creighton's campus, is an 80,000-square-foot community health center with a 20-bed emergency department. Catalog courses also use the Omaha VA Medical Center, CHI Health Immanuel and the children's hospital, Children's Nebraska, which lists Creighton among its partner schools.

An undated handbook guideline on overnight call also lists CHI Health Lakeside, CHI Health Mercy Council Bluffs in Iowa, CHI Health Midlands in Papillion and Methodist Hospital as Omaha clerkship sites. In year 4, the Omaha campus's Rural Family Medicine Sub-Internship places students with family physicians in western Iowa, western and central Nebraska and eastern Wyoming, mostly in outpatient clinics.

In Phoenix, the Creighton University Arizona Health Education Alliance has joined Creighton, Dignity Health St. Joseph's Hospital and Medical Center, Valleywise Health and District Medical Group since 2017, giving Creighton students enrolled in Phoenix priority access to clinical training. St. Joseph's, where Creighton medical students have rotated since 2005, is a 576-bed hospital with a Level I trauma center, a Level III NICU and the Barrow Neurological Institute.

Valleywise Health has sites across Maricopa County. They include an acute care hospital with the Diane & Bruce Halle Arizona Burn Center and Level I trauma care, three behavioral health hospitals and 11 community health centers. District Medical Group's more than 650 providers staff them. Fourth-year electives also run at Phoenix Children's, which the undated call guideline lists among Phoenix clerkship sites, and in Chandler and Prescott.

Choice starts in year 1 with GOLD selectives, short courses in four groups: Student Interest Selectives in the humanities and special topics, Guided Research Selectives, Career Exploration Selectives and Mission Outreach Selectives. Each is worth 0.5 to 1 credit, and you need 1.5 credits before year 3, including at least one Student Interest Selective.

The Student Interest lists differ by campus. Omaha's include Creative Writing Workshop for Future Physicians, Communicating in Spanish for Medical Professionals and the Physician's Vocation Program, an introduction to Ignatian spirituality through reading, prayer and reflective writing. Phoenix's include Photography and Medicine, Drumming Cultures of the World, Opera and Disease and Foundations of Homelessness and Street Medicine. Mini Medical School selectives are local service projects of at least 30 contact hours.

In year 4, after the required courses, you choose 28 credits from sub-internships, critical care selectives, clinical electives, up to 8 credits of non-clinical electives and up to 12 credits of extramural (away) electives. Away electives must be at LCME-accredited medical schools, residency programs accredited by the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) or military sites.

Fourth-year choices reflect each city. Phoenix offers Street Medicine, Respite Care for the Homeless at the Circle the City Medical Respite Center and a St. Vincent de Paul clinic elective, where you carry your own panel of patients. Omaha offers Medicine and the Law, Planetary Health and a Domestic Violence Practicum with community agencies and shelters.

International options center on the Dominican Republic. Fourth-year ILAC electives cover rural outpatient medicine, women's healthcare and blindness-prevention screening, and ILAC's three-week Summer Health Program each July places students in rural communities. The school's FAQ, unchanged since at least 2022, says 30% to 40% of students go on an international rotation. It also names Project Cura, an Omaha student organization, with sites including Gambia, Ghana, Cambodia, Peru, India and Romania.

Dual degrees run with Creighton's Graduate School. The 2026-27 catalog and the handbook's dual degree policy list an MD with an MA in Medical Humanities and Ethics, an MS in Biomedical Sciences, an MBA or an MPH. They also list an MD with a PhD in Biomedical Sciences, Medical Microbiology and Immunology, or Pharmacology and Neuroscience. You need good academic standing, and you are never enrolled in both programs at once.

For a master's, you can start coursework in the summer after year 1, then spend a full year on it after year 2, once you have passed Step 1. The MBA, offered with the Heider College of Business, is completed mostly as full-time study in that year. Up to 8 credits of master's coursework in year 4 count as non-clinical electives, and both degrees must be finished within seven years.

The Arrupe Global Scholars and Partnerships program is a five-year MD/MPH in global health and health equity, which you apply for through the MD secondary application. It opens with an orientation and immersion at ILAC about three weeks before year 1. A three-week research immersion abroad comes before year 2, then a year of mostly MPH study with eight weeks abroad on your practicum and capstone.

You then complete clerkships in Omaha or Phoenix, and in year 5 you present your capstone findings at your partner site and take a four-week clinical elective there. Partner sites are in Rwanda, Ecuador, Nepal and the Dominican Republic, and a five-year Ignatian formation program of seminars, reflections and retreats runs alongside.

The MD/PhD trains physician-scientists. You are admitted with your MD place or during years 1 and 2, and take PhD coursework in the summers before and during them. After passing Step 1, you spend at least three full academic years on PhD coursework and research before returning for clerkships, and both degrees must be finished within 10 years.

Research without a second degree is also possible. The Guided Research Selectives take you from a grant proposal and Institutional Review Board (IRB) approval, the ethics sign-off for research on people, to a poster, presentation or submitted paper by year 2. In the summer after year 1, IDC 797 supports a mentored project and the Summer Medical Student Fellowship Program offers research. Directed Independent Research earns up to 8 credits in year 4.

Omaha teaching is based in the CL and Rachel Werner Center for Health Sciences Education, a 145,000-square-foot building opened in 2023 for future physicians, nurses, therapists, physician assistants and EMS technicians. It has study lounges and a dedicated medical student locker room. Its simulation center includes 15 clinical exam rooms, 10 single-patient hospital rooms, an operating room, a nine-bed acute care lab, a task training lab and a virtual reality space.

Omaha's high-fidelity simulators range from premature infants to adults, and task trainers let you practice airway management, vascular access, lumbar punctures, joint injections and point-of-care ultrasound.

Phoenix students learn in the Virginia G. Piper Charitable Trust Health Sciences Building, a seven-story, 195,000-square-foot building at Park Central in midtown Phoenix, reachable by Valley Metro Rail. Nearly 1,000 students in six health programs share it. Its simulation center has 16 clinical exam rooms, nine single-patient hospital rooms, an operating room and trauma bay, an ambulance simulation suite and the anatomy lab, plus manikins that breathe, blink and bleed.

Each campus has its own student affairs team, led by an associate dean, with learning specialists who help you plan your studies, including for Step 1. Academic support includes individual consultations, free tutoring on request, review sessions and practice questions from older students, and a Study Buddies scheme that matches first- and second-year students with study partners.

The school says its formal mentoring program involves both students and faculty. The Omaha-based Vital Signs program, whose description is unchanged since at least 2022, pairs each first-year student with a second-year buddy. Four or five pairs form a group with third- and fourth-year peer mentors and a faculty mentor. In years 3 and 4 you choose a career mentor from nearly 100 clinicians, and nearly 500 alumni can be reached by email and phone.

A Wellness Council of two elected students from each class organizes wellness events and a quarterly publication, the Wellness Chronicle. Counseling services are available on both campuses, and the school recommends that any psychiatric care come from a professional not involved in assessing or promoting students.