The LSU Health Shreveport School of Medicine MD program

Phase 1 runs on a flipped classroom, so class time goes to applying what you prepared, with classmates and faculty. School policies name the formats: team-based learning with individual and group readiness tests, case-based and problem-based learning, and peer instruction, where you answer a question, discuss it and answer again.

Year 2 takes the organ systems one by one; the cardiovascular course, for example, spans anatomy, histology, physiology, pharmacology, pathology, cardiology and surgery. Lectures, small groups, standardized patient exercises and simulation continue throughout.

In early clinical skills training, nutrition teaching includes motivational interviewing, a counseling style that helps patients find their own reasons to change. In the family medicine, internal medicine, pediatrics, and obstetrics and gynecology clerkships, you assess patients' dietary history and interpret metabolic markers. In March 2026 the school joined a federal nutrition education initiative, which commits schools to at least 40 hours of nutrition education or an equivalent.

In years 3 and 4 learning moves to the wards and clinics. You work on teams with residents, doctors in specialty training, and attending physicians, the senior doctors in charge. You present patients on rounds and take call, staying on to admit and care for patients after hours. As a sub-intern in year 4 you carry much of an intern's workload under supervision.

The school's workload policy describes a pre-clerkship week. On average you have about 16 hours of in-person teaching, plus no more than 4 hours of other scheduled sessions such as small groups, simulation or the Longitudinal Clinical Experience. Contact time should not pass 20 hours in any week, averaged across weeks without exams.

The rest of the week is for study. The policy assumes an extra hour of study per contact hour, plus assigned work such as readings, practice questions and preparation for team sessions, all within a 60-hour weekly total.

Clerkship weeks are capped at 80 hours, counting patient care, call, conferences and up to 45 minutes of pre-rounding a day, but not reading at home. You get one day in seven free, averaged over four weeks, at least 8 hours off between shifts (ideally 10) and no more than six overnight shifts in a row. A shift can run 16 hours plus up to 4 to finish rounds and teaching, but only once in seven days, and home call counts toward your hours.

Anatomy starts with Medical Anatomy, a six-credit year 1 course of lectures and labs in gross anatomy and embryology. It surveys the body region by region, introduces how nerves control the internal organs and how structures form before birth, and links topics to patients through clinical correlation lectures. On the 2025-26 curriculum chart it runs in January and February.

Anatomy continues inside later courses. Musculoskeletal Biology covers the back and limbs, and Neuroscience II includes lab study of the brain, spinal cord, cranial nerves and head and neck. In year 2 the cardiovascular and pulmonary courses add gross anatomy and histology labs.

The school describes its teaching as a blend of traditional cadaveric dissection and virtual reality. A $3 million renovation over the past few years gave the Gross Anatomy Laboratory 34 workstations, with adjustable tables and monitors that relay the instructor's demonstration. A closed-circuit ventilation system reduces formaldehyde exposure, and the lab holds more than 150 students.

Next door, the Virtual Reality Anatomy Lab has 25 workstations with headsets running VH Dissector XR software, in use since January 2026. You can dissect a virtual cadaver layer by layer, rotate it and see cross-sections in the same view. An anatomy professor describes it as reinforcement between lab sessions, since nothing replaces hands-on dissection.

In year 4, students heading for fields such as surgery, pathology, obstetrics and gynecology (OB/GYN), radiology or anesthesiology can apply, with permission, to take Three Dimensional Anatomy. This two-week elective has up to eight students per block. You fully dissect one of five regions, such as the thorax or the pelvis, and match it to cross-sectional images.

You meet patients in your first semester. The Longitudinal Clinical Experience, four one-credit courses across years 1 and 2, is a doctoring strand that runs alongside the science, stressing a humanistic approach and the basic clinical skills every doctor needs. It uses standardized patients and real ones, including hands-on outpatient work in the newly developed clinic run by hospitalists, doctors who specialize in hospital care, for patients recently discharged from hospital.

Clinical Skills courses in years 1 and 2 teach communication, history-taking and full and focused examinations on standardized patients. Clerkships begin in early July of year 3, after the Transition to Clerkship course.

Outside the timetable, MeSCO, the Medical Student Charity Outreach Organization, runs a free clinic led by students and physicians for the Shreveport-Bossier community. In the summer after year 1 you can apply to the Primary Care Rural Preceptorship Program, working alongside primary care doctors in rural or underserved parts of Louisiana. Applications close on January 31, and preceptorships can start in June.

Every course in years 1 and 2 is pass/fail, with a pass mark of 70%. The seven core clerkships are graded honors (89.5% or more), high pass (79.5% or more), pass (69.5% or more) or fail, while all electives and all of year 4 are pass/fail. Each syllabus sets out how the grade is built, and faculty add a written narrative where they can.

Pre-clerkship courses of four weeks or more give you formative assessment, feedback that does not count toward your grade, by their midpoint. Tools include practice quizzes, readiness tests, standardized patient feedback and formative OSCEs (objective structured clinical examinations), timed stations with standardized patients. Each core clerkship has a mid-clerkship meeting with the director, who checks your log of required diagnoses and procedures.

Written exams, including those from the National Board of Medical Examiners (NBME), are taken on your laptop in a proctored Testing Center. Clerkship assessment includes NBME subject examinations, or shelf exams, which are national multiple-choice tests in clinical subjects. At the end of year 2 you perform a comprehensive physical exam on a standardized patient, scored against a checklist of core techniques. You must pass it to graduate, retaking it after remediation if needed.

USMLE Step 1 covers the basic sciences and has been reported only as pass or fail since January 26, 2022. Early in the spring of year 2 every student sits the NBME Comprehensive Basic Science Exam (CBSE), an ungraded, shorter timed version of Step 1. Step 1 follows when the review course ends, and the school's Roadmap to Residency, its year-by-year planning guide, places it in June and July.

You must pass Step 1 within three attempts and by August 1 of year 4, but a late or failed attempt does not stop you starting year 3. Step 2 CK must be taken by October 1 of year 4 and passed, again within three attempts, by December 1. You need both to graduate.

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 August 2027 would sit Step 1 in about June or July 2029, after the switch. Step 2 CK would follow by October 1, 2030, so both exams would fall under the new model. These are projections from the school's calendars and policies, not published dates.

• A first CBSE score below 70% means building a study plan with the learning specialist and retaking the CBSE or an equivalent practice exam.
• A student who fails Step 1 stays in their clerkship and plans the next attempt with the Senior Associate Dean for Medical Education.
• Failed courses are remediated within 12 weeks of the semester's end, with at most three remediations in the program and one per semester. A failed remediation can mean repeating the year.
• You must finish within six years of enrolling, and a June 2026 policy update made clear that leave of absence time counts toward the limit.
• After its 2025 review the LCME granted full accreditation. Its directory, updated October 14, 2026, shows full accreditation, first granted in 1968, with the next survey in 2029-30.

Most clinical training is in Shreveport. The primary year 3 site is the Ochsner LSU Health Shreveport Academic Medical Center at 1541 Kings Highway, an acute care hospital with a 24-hour emergency department. It is a Level 1 trauma center and has a burn unit. From 2013 to 2018 these hospitals were run under the name University Health, which still appears in the catalog description of one fourth-year surgery sub-internship.

Other Shreveport sites cover specialties. St. Mary Medical Center has a women's and children's inpatient wing and hosts the pediatrics sub-internship, and the Shreveport psychiatry sub-internships run at Louisiana Behavioral Health. Willis-Knighton hosts gynecologic oncology surgeries and some surgery and urology rotations, and Christus Highland a community neurology elective. The otolaryngology sub-internship includes the Overton Brooks VA Medical Center.

The catalog names Ochsner LSU Health Monroe Medical Center, in northeast Louisiana, as the school's other primary teaching hospital. It has 244 beds, a 24-hour emergency department and Level III trauma verification from 2023, and more than 40 LSU Health Shreveport faculty teach rotating students and residents there. Fourth-year sub-internships in Monroe cover family medicine, OB/GYN, psychiatry and surgery, with electives in OB/GYN, emergency and consultation psychiatry and community surgery.

Other fourth-year rotations reach further. A rural family medicine sub-internship runs at North Caddo Medical Center in Vivian, and a family medicine sub-internship with the school's residency program in Alexandria, where students need a car to get around town. Area Health Education Center (AHEC) electives place you with physicians in communities across Louisiana. The Rural Primary Care elective requires an application and takes up to seven students per site per block.

The school assigns clerkship sites centrally and lets you state preferences for their order and location. With a good reason, such as an accommodation or a conflict of interest, you can request a different site or sequence before third-year registration. Daily travel to sites more than 20 miles from the Academic Medical Center counts toward duty hours, except travel to Monroe.

Year 3 includes two four-week pass/fail electives. The catalog lists 17 areas, from ophthalmology, urology and neurosurgery to pathology, radiology, anesthesiology, emergency medicine and seven medicine subspecialties. The emergency medicine elective, in a Level 1 trauma center, pairs you with an emergency medicine resident and is, for many students, their first time assessing patients without a known diagnosis.

In year 4 you choose one four-week sub-internship, many with caps and set blocks. Most are based at the Academic Medical Center, including emergency medicine and the medical intensive care unit. The ophthalmology sub-internship runs in blocks 1 to 3 and is reserved for students applying in ophthalmology. Surgery offers six tracks: elective surgery, surgical oncology, trauma and surgical critical care, vascular, cardiothoracic and pediatric surgery.

The 22 weeks of electives draw on 85 elective courses in the 2026-27 catalog, including point-of-care ultrasound, palliative care, sleep medicine, child protection medicine and research. Lifestyle and Culinary Medicine (4 weeks, up to 10 students) teaches nutrition counseling with hands-on cooking. Medical Education has you help teach clinical skills sessions, and Clinical Science Review gives 2, 4 or 6 weeks of independent study for Step 2 CK.

In year 4 you can also take up to four away rotations, or extramural electives, at other institutions, not counting the global health elective. You must first finish all core clerkships and be in good standing. Most are arranged through the Visiting Student Learning Opportunities (VSLO) service of the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC), with an approval request at least six weeks ahead.

International electives are allowed only through the school's own global health electives, which the 2026-27 catalog lists in western Kenya (four weeks) and Honduras (two weeks, up to 10 students). In Kenya, Department of Family Medicine faculty supervise mobile clinics for about 30 to 40 hours a week, where you see 10 to 20 patients a day through translators. A student group, Support for Humanitarianism through Intercontinental Projects (SHIP), raises funds for the trip and for medicines.

The MD-PhD Program trains physician-scientists through the School of Medicine and the LSU Health Shreveport School of Graduate Studies. You complete the first three years of the MD, take Step 2, spend three to four years on PhD research, then return for the final clinical year. There are six PhD programs, from biochemistry and molecular biology to pharmacology, toxicology and neuroscience.

You can apply through the MD-PhD option on your application or, once enrolled, by the end of your fourth semester. The School of Medicine's home page adds that joint PhD programs also run with Louisiana Tech.

LSU Shreveport (LSUS) is a separate university in the city. Under an agreement announced on August 18, 2026, students completing their second preclinical year can take an LSUS Master of Business Administration (MBA), Master of Health Administration (MHA) or Master of Public Health (MPH). You finish it in about a year before the clinical phase. The MBA and MHA are online and the MPH runs in evening classes, with nine of its credit hours earned through MD electives in the clinical phase.

Without an extra degree, the Medical Student Research Program pairs you with a faculty mentor for a paid, part-time summer project of about five weeks, usually after year 1. It ends with a poster at the fall symposium. The Research Distinction Track asks for at least eight weeks of mentored research, two presentations, a submitted first-author manuscript and a grant proposal. Completing it is noted on your diploma and in your Dean's letter, the evaluation sent with residency applications.

You declare the track by June 30 of year 3, and research electives taken for credit do not count toward its eight weeks. Medical students also founded the American Medical Student Research Journal in 2013.

Teaching centers on the Center for Medical Education, a four-level, 155,000-square-foot building completed in 2023. It holds the 500-seat W. Clinton Rasberry Jr. Auditorium, built in the round, two 250-seat classrooms and active learning classrooms designed for group work.

Its Clinical Skills Center, accredited by the American College of Surgeons as a Comprehensive Education Institute, covers 27,000 square feet over two floors. The Standardized Patient Lab has 15 recorded exam rooms watched from a 15-station grading room. Seven simulation rooms include a four-bay hospital ward, emergency, adult, pediatric, neonatal and obstetric rooms, and an ultrasound suite.

Simulators include an obstetric manikin for deliveries and emergencies, newborn and child manikins, and HARVEY, which reproduces heart sounds, plus task trainers for central lines, intubation, lumbar puncture and thoracentesis. The center also has a procedural skills lab, a six-bay ultrasound training room and a simulated operating room. Its Technical Skills Lab is a test center for the Fundamentals of Laparoscopic Surgery and Fundamentals of Endoscopic Surgery programs.

The Bakowski Center for Culinary Medicine is a 911-square-foot teaching kitchen for up to 50 people, and more than 25,000 square feet go to wellness, including a fitness center and meditation rooms. Students can use 8,600 electronic journals and more than 2,400 electronic books, and research projects can take you to the Biomedical Research Institute.

Six academic societies, named after former deans and chancellors such as Edgar Hull, the school's first dean, provide mentoring and coaching across all four years, with faculty chairs. The faculty and staff who formally advise you do not assign your summative grades.

The Medical Education Learning Consultants, a team of learning specialists, help at no cost with study plans, NBME and shelf exam results, Step readiness and content tutoring. The Office for Medical Education keeps an open door for academic advising, and SEAM, Student Educators Academic Mentors, pairs older and younger students, including during Step preparation.

The school provides study resources including UWorld, AMBOSS, Board Vitals, First Aid, Pathoma and, in years 1 and 2, Boards and Beyond. A Director of Career Advising meets students one to one, and more than 25 medical interest groups and specialty faculty advisors help you explore fields.

The Student Counseling Center offers counseling and a 24-hour crisis line, and the Office of Student Affairs is the first stop for academic and non-academic problems.