The University of Kentucky College of Medicine MD program

The college describes its teaching as integrated: foundational science is tied to clinical application from the first course. Each organ-system block runs from normal structure and function to disease, diagnosis and treatment. Neurosciences, for example, combines neuroanatomy, physiology, pathology and pharmacology with working out a diagnosis from a patient's history and examination.

Teaching methods can vary by site. Interactive large-group sessions stream live to the Lexington, Bowling Green and Northern Kentucky campuses, and most are recorded. At Bowling Green and Northern Kentucky, faculty with University of Kentucky appointments also run local lectures, labs, case presentations and small groups. They use flipped classroom sessions too, where you study the material beforehand and use class time to apply it.

Three curricular threads run through all four years instead of sitting in one course: health disparities science, health systems science and nutrition. The nutrition thread, for example, brings in registered dietitians, hands-on culinary medicine sessions and community work on food access.

In year 3 the wards and clinics take over. You complete each clerkship in turn as an active member of the team, assessing patients, discussing plans and joining rounds under faculty and residents. Some classroom teaching continues: surgery, for example, adds weekly protected learning sessions, case discussions and skills workshops.

Anatomy is taught in MD 814 Clinical Anatomy and Radiology, a 9-credit-hour course that opens year 1; the college's 2022-23 curriculum chart ran it from August to September. It covers core gross anatomy in a clinical context, matching the structures you see on cadavers with radiology images and with what you find when examining standardized patients.

The labs use prosection: an experienced anatomist dissects the cadavers in advance, and you examine and work with them to understand the body in three dimensions. A trauma surgeon, a diagnostic radiologist, an internist and a pediatrician helped the anatomy faculty design the course. Bodies are donated through the college's Willed Body Program, and each year faculty, staff and students attend an interfaith memorial service for the donors.

The college's view is that dissection is a skill students cannot master in a first-year course. It cites the American College of Surgeons, the Association of Program Directors in Surgery and the Association for Surgical Education, which recommend operative anatomy dissection at the end of medical school for future surgeons. Its fourth-year anatomy elective therefore lets you dissect your future field's region, from the brain and spinal cord for neurosurgery to the eye for ophthalmology.

The catalog lists the elective as ANA 850 Applied Human Anatomy, with a Northern Kentucky version, ANA 963 Anatomy-NKY. In 2026-27 it is offered in Block 7, from November 16 to December 13, 2026.

Your first patients are standardized patients, for physical examination in Clinical Anatomy and Radiology and for interviewing in Introduction to Clinical Medicine, which runs through most of year 1. Its weekly small groups and practice sessions build the skills and confidence to interview real patients, and the course also covers the social and economic side of health.

Introduction to Clinical Medicine includes clinical experiences, and in its second semester interprofessional ones, alongside students from other health professions. Faculty evaluations in years 1 and 2 cover your interactions with actual patients as well as standardized ones.

Students interested in family medicine can apply for FamTrack, an 18-month program run by the Department of Family and Community Medicine. From January of year 1 to the end of year 2, you are paired with a family physician and spend a half day a month in clinic. You follow one patient or family over time, meet on Monday evenings to discuss cases, and spend 10 days with a mentor in the summer between years 1 and 2.

Students also run free clinics. Volunteers from every class staff the UK Salvation Army Clinic, which has served uninsured people in Lexington since 1986, with urgent care visits on Tuesday and Thursday evenings. Northern Kentucky students run the CCRU Clinic for overnight guests at the Emergency Shelter of Northern Kentucky.

Every course and clerkship is graded pass or fail. Formative assessments give feedback during a course without counting toward the grade, while summative assessments at the end check that you meet the competency standard. All students are assessed against six program objectives, modeled on the core competencies used in residency training: patient care, medical knowledge, practice-based learning and improvement, interpersonal and communication skills, professionalism and systems-based practice.

In years 1 and 2 you are assessed through multiple-choice exams and quizzes, written assignments, evidence-based medicine projects, faculty ratings of your small-group work and patient interactions, and observed clinical skills. Objective structured clinical evaluations (OSCEs), timed stations where you interview or examine standardized patients, run through all four years. Standardized patients score you on communication rubrics and examination checklists, and the communication rubric builds year on year.

Internally written mile-marker exams start with the year 2 OSCE in Advanced Clinical Medicine. Year 3 adds a skills check-off and the Entrustment in Clinical Medicine OSCEs, which you must take before year 4 and which test the skills you need to progress. In year 4, the Transition to Residency OSCE tests intern tasks such as cross-cover, teaching, defusing anger, breaking bad news, informed consent and goals-of-care conversations.

In the clerkships, faculty and residents evaluate and directly observe your clinical work, using tools built on Entrustable Professional Activities (EPAs), the core tasks a new resident should be trusted to do. Every student has a required mid-clerkship feedback meeting before final evaluations. You also sit shelf exams, national multiple-choice subject exams from NBME, a co-sponsor of the USMLE. Third-year clerkship comments go word for word into your Medical Student Performance Evaluation (MSPE), the letter sent with residency applications, which ends without a one-word summary rating.

USMLE Step 1, the licensing exam on the basic sciences behind medicine, has been reported only as pass or fail since January 26, 2022. You must take it before starting year 3, and you take Step 2 CK, on clinical knowledge, during year 4. To graduate you must pass both, within at most four attempts each. 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 sit Step 1 in about March to May 2029, after the switch. Step 2 CK would fall in year 4, between June 2030 and April 2031. These are projections from the college's calendar and curriculum chart, not published dates. Both exams would come under the new model, whose dates the USMLE plans to publish more than a year ahead.

• The LCME directory, updated October 14, 2026, lists the program's accreditation as full, first granted in 1960, with the next survey in 2026-27. The LCME last continued its accreditation in 2019, for eight years.
• The LCME survey team visited on October 5 and 6, 2026. In an October 16, 2026 update, the college said the formal report and the LCME's official determination would follow in the coming months.
• All four campuses come under that single accreditation, because the LCME does not accredit the campuses of a medical school separately.
• LCME accreditation is what makes the program's students eligible to sit the USMLE.

You choose your campus when you apply, ranking a first and second choice. You interview at your first-choice campus, offers are for a seat there, and accepting binds you to that campus.

Lexington students rotate mainly through UK HealthCare, the University of Kentucky's hospitals and clinics. Its central hospital, UK Albert B. Chandler Hospital, is an 800-bed acute care hospital opened in 1962, with a Level I adult trauma center. Golisano Children's at UK sits inside UK Hospital, UK Good Samaritan Hospital has 180 licensed beds, and the Kentucky Clinic next to Chandler is the main outpatient clinic.

Bowling Green students spend all four years there and train with Med Center Health. Its flagship, The Medical Center at Bowling Green, is a 337-bed acute care hospital, and rotations also reach rural clinics and the critical access hospitals, small rural hospitals, in Scottsville and Franklin. Northern Kentucky students spend the preclinical years on the Northern Kentucky University campus in Highland Heights and the clinical years in St. Elizabeth Healthcare facilities and local practices.

RPLP students move to Morehead, about an hour from Lexington, for years 3 and 4. Rotations are mainly at UK St. Claire, which the college's Morehead FAQ describes as a 159-bed rural referral hospital, with an ICU, a hospitalist service and specialists such as cardiologists and oncologists. In year 4, many students take a rotation or two in Lexington or elsewhere; others stay at UK St. Claire all year.

Wherever you are based, one rotation goes through the Kentucky AHEC program, run jointly by the University of Kentucky and the University of Louisville. Sites are physicians' offices or hospitals in federally designated underserved or shortage areas, and you live in the community. AHEC can arrange housing with a $100-a-week allowance and pays mileage on qualifying rotations, generally those more than 30 miles from your home base and at least three weeks long.

Electives begin in the second semester of year 1, in free afternoons. The 2022-23 curriculum chart also leaves the summer after year 1 for vacation, research or clinical electives. The Lexington campus FAQ lists an Introduction to Clinical Research elective and a Global Health Elective in years 1 and 2. It also says many students join the Shoulder-to-Shoulder brigades, helping provide care at a year-round clinic in Santo Domingo, Ecuador, each spring break.

In year 4 you pick five electives. The catalog's list runs from pain management and forensic pathology to legislative advocacy, community engagement and the narrative basis of patient care. Many courses have campus versions, such as community anesthesia in Morehead, sports medicine in Bowling Green and palliative care in Northern Kentucky, and one acting internship is in rural family medicine in Hazard. The RPLP lists five acting internship options and more than 15 electives.

You can also rotate away: the catalog includes extramural electives, rotations at other institutions, in most specialties, plus an international extramural rotation. An optional class meeting on away rotations is held each January of year 3. The college points students to the Visiting Student Learning Opportunities (VSLO) service of the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC).

The MD/PhD program, based in Lexington, averages 7.3 years. You complete two research rotations, in the summers before years 1 and 2 or during term, and sit Step 1 in the spring of year 2. On Track A you then move into PhD research and return for years 3 and 4; students still choosing a lab can do a third rotation and year 3 first (Track B).

Two five-year MD/MPH routes add a Master of Public Health. With the UK College of Public Health, you take most public health courses in the third of the five years, enrolled only in that college, and some courses can count toward both degrees. Through the Bowling Green Campus, an MD/MPH with the Department of Public Health at Western Kentucky University (WKU) usually takes five years. Its core courses fill one year after year 2 or 3, on campus or online.

Also through Bowling Green, an MD/MBA with WKU's Gordon Ford College of Business adds a year of business study after year 2 or 3, which most students finish in five years in total. It covers topics such as marketing, managerial finance, data analytics and organizational behavior.

The voluntary Scholarly Concentration Program earns a special designation on your MSPE. You apply in the fall of year 1 to one of five concentrations: Bioethics and Clinical Ethics, Global Health, Rural Health, Primary Care, or Clinical and Translational Research. Each takes 12 credit hours of electives, at least eight in years 1 and 2 and at least four in year 4; Rural Health takes 14 in all. A capstone project runs across all four years.

Rural Health adds a year 4 community project and a second AHEC rotation. Primary Care includes four weeks shadowing a community primary care provider between years 1 and 2 and a primary care acting internship. Clinical and Translational Research ends in a project through MD 851 Research in Medicine.

The Director of Medical Student Research helps any student find mentors and projects. The Lexington campus FAQ says about two-thirds of students do research during medical school, and that the competitive Professional Student Mentored Research Fellowship takes about 30 students a year, each with a $3,000 stipend.

Standardized patient exam rooms at every campus are set up like ordinary clinic rooms. Cameras and built-in computers let you and faculty review encounters, and you write up each one afterward, as in practice. The program dates from the 1980s, and other University of Kentucky colleges rely on it for their own training.

Northern Kentucky students train in Northern Kentucky University's simulation center, and Bowling Green has its own simulation lab, with full access to WKU facilities. In Lexington, the Center for Advanced Training and Simulation (CATS) lab copies an operating room's laparoscopic setups, and any medical student can use it to practice hand skills.

The Michael D. Rankin MD Health Education Building, a 509,000-square-foot building at University and Huguelet drives on the University of Kentucky campus, will house programs of the colleges of Medicine, Public Health, Health Sciences and Nursing. A UK news story from October 2025 put its completion in spring 2027.

Every student joins a learning community, called a house, named after a horse breed such as Thoroughbred, Clydesdale or Appaloosa, in honor of Kentucky's horse racing tradition. The ten houses are split by campus: six for Lexington and RPLP students, two in Bowling Green and two in Northern Kentucky. Each has elected student leaders and its own faculty advisors, and partners with a local service organization, such as Hope House or God's Pantry food bank.

Your house's Learning Community Advisor meets you several times a year for career, wellness and academic advice, as part of Career Pathways, the college's advising program, which follows the AAMC's Careers in Medicine program. In years 3 and 4 you must also meet the Advanced Development Director, a specialty advisor, for your intended field.

Academic success staff help with study strategies, time management and multiple-choice technique, including Step 1, Step 2 CK and shelf exam preparation. Lexington and Bowling Green each have an academic advisor, and Northern Kentucky and Morehead share one. Peer learning mentors, second- to fourth-year students trained by the team, act as coaches and tutors in person or by video, phone or text.

For well-being, the college offers 12 free counseling sessions a year through the Woodland Wellness Group, run with the Lexington Medical Society, and a Medical Student Support Program with the Department of Psychiatry. Regional students can use free counseling at WKU and Northern Kentucky University, and RPLP students can use Morehead State University's services and the St. Claire Counseling Center. Resilient, a student-led group, works to prevent burnout and destigmatize mental health.