The John A. Burns School of Medicine University of Hawaii at Manoa MD program

PBL is the backbone of years 1 and 2, and the 2026-27 catalog dates JABSOM's problem-based curriculum to fall 1989. Each tutorial group has five or six students and a faculty member who acts as facilitator. Groups meet twice a week, usually for about three hours. A patient case is the starting point, and you learn the basic sciences mainly in the context of solving it.

From each case, your group draws up learning issues: the questions it cannot yet answer. You choose and research them, pull the findings together and apply them to the patient in your case, with feedback on your skills. MD 1 also teaches you to write learning-issue handouts, so the school expects that unit to take more time outside class.

Each unit pairs its tutorials with a course of integrated basic science lectures, labs and colloquia (lecture-discussion sessions), plus a clinical skills course. In year 1 a community health course runs alongside. Content experts act as resources rather than leading the learning. Most pre-clerkship sessions are compulsory, but lectures generally are not unless a course says so.

Teaching moves to the bedside in year 3, supported by Third Year Colloquia. Year 4 is shaped by your choice of electives, with Transition to Residency weeks to prepare you for internship.

In the pre-clerkship years, your two PBL tutorials anchor the week, with clinical skills, community health and learning community sessions around them. The week follows the school's policy on self-directed learning and protected study time. A half-day means four hours, usually 8am to noon or 1pm to 5pm. Required, structured sessions are capped at seven half-days (28 hours) a week, averaged over a course, not counting electives in MD 2 to MD 7.

Required assignments done outside class are capped at three half-days (12 hours) a week, except in MD 1. The rest of your time is protected and unscheduled, which the school considers critical to self-directed learning. Each semester you may miss at most three calendar days, including no more than one PBL session, and you should not miss exams.

Weeks change in year 3. During the clinic semester, internal medicine usually leaves your weekends free, and you leave clinic for Friday afternoon teaching. On its hospital block you take call until 10pm at the latest and get one day off a week.

JABSOM's anatomy department says that in the first two years on the Kakaʻako campus, you learn the gross anatomy of the entire body by dissecting human cadavers in its gross anatomy lab. The program calls the donors silent teachers. Anatomy is examined partly through practical exams; the retake rules mention a combined practical and multiple-choice exam.

Donated bodies come through the University of Hawaiʻi Willed Body Program, which the department runs. Each year medical students and staff take part in a memorial service honoring donors and their families. MD students also paddle donors' remains out by canoe for scattering off Magic Island, as a final mahalo, or thank-you.

You can return to anatomy later. Once you have started clerkships, ANAT 545 offers advanced dissection and observation of surgical procedures. ANAT 599 offers independent study in gross anatomy, histology or anatomy research, and surgery offers a surgical anatomy elective.

Community work starts in orientation week, at a Community Health Fair where local organizations invite you to join them. You then work with your chosen organization for all of year 1 in the Community Health courses (MDED 581 to 584). Sites choose students according to how many they can take. One option, the WISH program, links first-years with residents of care homes for the elderly.

The clinical skills courses give you regular practice in taking histories and doing physical exams, supervised by clinical skills faculty, through lectures, skills labs and standardized patient sessions. In MD 1 you learn the Basic Physical Exam Sequence (BPES), a head-to-toe screening exam you must perform on a standardized patient, observed by faculty, by the end of year 1.

Alongside these courses, the Longitudinal Clinical Preceptorship (LCP) gives you some of your first encounters with real patients. It pairs you with one community physician from September of year 1 to March of year 2. The LCP began in 2020-21, replacing an older structure in which preceptors taught by organ system.

The LCP's 2025-26 preceptor page sets six clinic days in year 1 and five in year 2, when you take histories and examine patients under your preceptor's guidance. About 114 preceptors teach 156 students, mostly in general internal medicine, family medicine or pediatrics.

The catalog also lists required experiences in the Hawaiʻi Houseless Outreach through Medical Education (HOME) clinics. The student-run Hawaii H.O.M.E. Project, founded in 2005, holds several free clinics a week for sheltered and unsheltered houseless people across Oʻahu and takes a mobile health van to others.

In years 1 and 2, courses are graded Credit, No Credit or Incomplete, and you must pass each unit to move on. Fail one exam in a unit with a score of at least 50% and you are normally offered a retake in the same format within a week. Failing two exams in a unit, or scoring under 50%, means the retake is not automatic. Exams are taken on iPads under rules modeled on NBME testing.

Clerkships are graded Honors, High Pass, Credit or No Credit on knowledge, skills and professionalism, with a written narrative. Some include an Objective Structured Clinical Examination (OSCE), in which you rotate through timed stations with standardized patients. In internal medicine, Credit needs a shelf score of at least 60; Honors needs 79 plus Honors recommendations from both the hospital block and the clinics.

A failed shelf exam or clerkship OSCE normally brings one retake. Passing it caps that clerkship at Credit; failing it means at least four weeks of clinical remediation before a third attempt. Fourth-year rotations are graded Credit or No Credit, though emergency medicine and geriatrics can also award Honors or High Pass.

To graduate you must pass every course and required activity, including OSCEs, required autopsies and learning community activities, and show consistent professionalism. That includes several multi-station standardized patient exams, and year 4 brings the Clinical Skills Assessment (MDED 541), a required multidisciplinary assessment. You must finish within seven years, not counting time in a dual-degree program.

The USMLE is the exam series state medical boards use in licensing decisions. Step 1 has been reported only as pass or fail since January 26, 2022. JABSOM requires you to pass Step 1 and Step 2 CK to graduate. You may start clerkships with a Step 1 score pending, but failing it during a clerkship means leaving for the semester until you 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 notice had named 2028. On the current schedule, a student entering in July 2027 would take Step 1 around May 2029, after the switch, and Step 2 CK in year 4, in 2030-31. This estimate rests on JABSOM's published policies, its four-year chart and a 2026 handbook's mention of Step 1 in May.

• Delaying Step 1 beyond the start of Transition to Clerkship means taking the next semester off, and three USMLE failures in total can lead to dismissal.
• The USMLE program has asked schools to review rules that restrict when students take Step exams, so JABSOM's timing rules may change.
• Your Medical Student Performance Evaluation (MSPE), the school's letter to residency programs, quotes end-of-course comments from PBL tutorials, clerkships and electives word for word, and notes exam failures.
• The LCME directory, updated October 14, 2026, lists JABSOM as fully accredited, with its next survey in 2032-33. For MD students, LCME accreditation is what makes you eligible to sit the USMLE; DO students and international graduates qualify through other routes.

The 2026-27 catalog lists JABSOM's clinical affiliates, from Hawaiʻi Pacific Health, The Queen's Health System and Hawaiʻi Permanente (Kaiser) to military, VA and community health center sites. Students also rotate through many private physician practices across the state.

Clerkship directors assign third-year sites. Internal medicine's hospital block is at The Queen's Medical Center, Kuakini Medical Center or Kaiser Permanente Medical Center. Its clinics include Queen Emma Clinics, community health clinics and private offices on Oʻahu or neighbor islands. Every obstetrics student works on labor and delivery at Kapiʻolani Medical Center for Women and Children; gynecologic surgery is at Hawaiʻi Pacific Health or Queen's.

Changing an assigned site is rare. You must ask within three business days, on grounds such as your own health or supervision by a relative or your own doctor. Switching sites with classmates is not allowed. Rotations cap work at 80 hours a week, averaged over the rotation, with at least eight hours off between shifts.

Living on a neighbor island for a pre-clerkship unit is elective, and if you choose it, local faculty lead your tutorials in person while lectures are streamed live. In year 3 you can take the clinic semester in Hilo, Waimea, Kona, Maui or Kauaʻi, working in local clinics across the six core fields with physician preceptors. You may also be assigned a clerkship site on a neighbor island. Fourth-years can add neighbor-island electives, including geriatrics and emergency medicine.

The Kauaʻi Medical Training Track's FAQ, written for the 2024-25 application cycle, says its students live on Kauaʻi for two to five months each year, about 15 months in all. They stay in a program house in Lihue, about five minutes' drive from Wilcox Medical Center, their main clinical site, with housing, utilities, airfare and car shipping covered. Kauaʻi physicians lead their tutorials and clinical skills workshops, and the FAQ credits them with giving students more clinical learning in years 1 and 2 than on Oʻahu.

Further afield, the Hawaiʻi/Pacific Basin Area Health Education Center (AHEC) offers month-long rural training in US-Affiliated Pacific Island communities, in teams with social work, pharmacy, nursing and public health students. It also helps with travel and shared lodging.

Pre-clerkship electives run from MD 2 to MD 7, with sign-ups after each mid-unit exam. They earn credit but do not count toward graduation requirements. The 2026-27 catalog lists options such as projects in medical education, the healer's art, an introduction to student research, health and wellness, quality improvement and an introduction to ultrasound.

The 2024-25 electives handbook added departmental options such as pediatric seminars and research in neurology, pathology or Native Hawaiian health, each worth one credit, with at most two per unit. Students run a Social Justice in Medicine elective each spring, and the Department of Native Hawaiian Health offers a clinical skills preceptorship in its Lau Ola clinic.

International options start in the MD 5 summer with the Pacific Basin Experience, two weeks at medical schools in Kochi, Osaka or Saga, Japan. Students who take Step 1 early enough in May can add a one- or two-week observation at selected schools in Japan and Korea.

Fourth-year electives range from subspecialties and sub-internships to rural internal medicine, rural child psychiatry, bedside ultrasound, laparoscopic skills and a junior PBL course director role. They are allotted by lottery in March or April of year 3, and a specialty advisor must sign off your schedule. The required emergency medicine and geriatrics rotations are placed by an earlier class lottery, usually in January.

Away rotations at other schools go through the Association of American Medical Colleges' Visiting Student Learning Opportunities (VSLO) service, and most host deadlines fall in April or May. Not every student does one. Family medicine, internal medicine and surgery offer one-month electives in Asia through partner institutions in countries including Japan, Korea, Taiwan and Thailand.

The Native Hawaiian Health Care elective (NHH 545) takes one to five students per four-week block. You care for Native Hawaiian patients under a community physician and write an essay on how Native Hawaiian healing and Western medicine come together.

JABSOM says more than 90% of its medical students take part in research. Routes include the Research Interest Group, research electives in the pre-clerkship and clerkship years, local or extramural projects in the MD 5 summer, and departmental contacts who match students with mentors. Student affairs funds help with travel to present research at national conferences and with publication fees.

The Dean's Certificate of Distinction in Research is the most structured route. Online modules adapted from a graduate course, Introduction to Clinical Research, sit alongside a faculty-mentored project, conference presentations, co-authored manuscripts and mentoring of first- and second-years. Most students start in year 1 and finish in December of year 4, three to three and a half years later.

The Graduate Certificate in Tropical Medicine is a one-year program offered to medical students, with hands-on experience in settings around the world. It meets the academic requirements to sit the CTropMed exam of the American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene, which leads to a certificate in clinical tropical medicine and travelers' health. JABSOM also awards Dean's Certificates of Distinction in other focus areas, including rural health.

A 2022 school policy covers other degrees. It strongly encourages finishing any graduate program before starting the MD, generally discourages concurrent graduate study during it, and bars MD courses from counting toward another degree. Time off to complete graduate work needs approval from the Student Standing and Promotion Committee. The assessment policy lists a research year among the breaks your MSPE records.

JABSOM moved in 2005 to a 9.9-acre waterfront complex in Kakaʻako, between Waikīkī and downtown Honolulu, built with state tobacco settlement funds. Years 1 and 2 are taught in the Medical Education Building (MEB) and in community health sites. The Biomedical Sciences Building, the UH Cancer Center and the UH Clinics at Kakaʻako share the campus.

The Center for Clinical Skills, on the MEB's second floor, has a suite of examination rooms for standardized patient sessions. It has trained community volunteers for this role since 1989 and draws on more than 200. It runs third-year clinical skills evaluations in pediatrics, internal medicine and family medicine, the standardized patient exams in fourth-year geriatrics and the comprehensive fourth-year clinical skills exam.

The SimTiki Simulation Center, in MEB room 212, runs manikin and virtual surgery simulation and is accredited by the Society for Simulation in Healthcare. It says it trains more than 3,000 learners a year, from high school students to military personnel.

The Māla Lāʻau Lapaʻau, completed in 2005 by the Department of Native Hawaiian Health, serves as the piko, or center point, of the school. Its 35 indigenous and endemic plants were used in Native Hawaiian medicine and cultural practice. It is used as an outdoor classroom and a quiet space open to all.

Learning communities, launched in July 2020, give you a home group for all four years. Each mauka or makai group has six or seven students from each class and one physician mentor, who acts as advisor, coach, clinical skills teacher and small-group facilitator. Mentors do not supervise or grade you. Sessions cover professionalism and professional identity, ethics, wellness and resiliency, clinical skills, culture and community, and health systems science.

The Office of Student Affairs (OSA) offers academic, personal and career counseling, connects you with specialty advisors and runs career nights and residency application sessions. A learning specialist builds individual study plans, including USMLE preparation. If you get a borderline or failing result, your course or clerkship director meets you, and the Evaluation, Remediation and Review Committee designs any remediation plan.

You can see a licensed clinical therapist for free, confidential counseling, by telehealth unless you ask to meet in person. Longer-term care moves to your health insurance. Ka Malu A Waʻahila offers culturally responsive counseling for Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander students. The attendance policy sets no academic penalty for time away to access health care.