The University of Nebraska College of Medicine MD program

Phase 1 presents basic science and clinical material together in organ-system blocks, instead of separate courses run by departments such as anatomy or biochemistry. Each block starts with how a system normally works, then covers its diseases, how they show up in patients and how they are prevented, diagnosed and treated, for individual patients and whole populations. The college says this mirrors how a physician approaches patients.

Large lectures sit alongside small groups that work through patient scenarios, plus labs, simulation and clinical skills practice on patient simulators. The college says interactive sessions make up about 40% of contact hours in each course and happen in person on both campuses. Lectures are streamed to the other campus from wherever the lecturer is based.

Some subjects run through all three phases as threads the catalog calls coils, each with its own director: communication, epidemiology, health systems sciences, inquiry, interprofessional education, point-of-care ultrasound (POCUS) and physical examination. Nutrition is spread the same way; the college counts at least 21 hours of nutrition instruction and assessment across your training.

From Phase 2 you learn mainly by caring for patients on clerkship teams, backed by seminars, conferences and rounds that students at other sites can join remotely. The three-phase design began with the class that entered in August 2017, when UNMC news called it Training the Physicians of Tomorrow.

Anatomy is taught inside the organ-system blocks rather than as a stand-alone course. The catalog says the musculoskeletal and integument block, the third block of year 1, teaches through dissection, virtual histology, small groups and lectures. It also trains you in surface anatomy, locating structures on a living body, to sharpen your physical examination.

Later blocks cover the anatomy of their own region: respiratory looks at the nose, throat and lungs through gross anatomy, imaging and histology, and neurosciences teaches neuroanatomy. The 2026-27 exam calendar lists practical exams in six blocks: musculoskeletal and integument (two), circulatory, respiratory, neurosciences, gastrointestinal and GU/reproductive/developmental.

In May 2026 UNMC named its gross anatomy lab the Drs. Shailendra and Sandhya Saxena Gross Anatomy Laboratory. Bodies come from people who donated them through UNMC's anatomical donor program. At an April 2025 memorial service, students honored 101 donors, whom anatomy faculty describe as students' first patients.

Kearney has its own gross anatomy lab, and the college says anatomy facilities and instruction are identical on both campuses. UNMC news in December 2025 said the Kearney faculty would include a full-time anatomist. In Phase 3 you can return to the lab as a teacher through the Senior Teaching Elective in Anatomy.

Clinical skills start in Fundamentals, the first block, which includes standardized patient encounters. Later blocks add the skills for each system, such as examining the nervous system in neurosciences or taking a full history and physical in respiratory, with attention to social and environmental factors. Phase 1 also requires eight Longitudinal Clinical Experience visits, which the catalog lists among its precepting activities; ask the school how these are arranged on your campus.

Formal patient care begins in Phase 2. The four-week Acute Care and Clinical Transitions block, mostly classroom-based, refreshes your examination skills through simulated patient encounters and teaches the first workup of common complaints, with emphasis on emergencies. You also practice using interpreters and telemedicine and learn common procedures in skills labs. Basic Life Support (BLS) certification and Epic electronic medical record training come before your first clerkship.

On clerkships you log each required patient encounter, noting the setting, the patient's age group and your role, from full (your own history, examination and reasoning) to partial or observing. Directors review the logs at mid-clerkship and at the end, so they can steer you toward patients you have not yet seen.

Clinical time on clerkships is capped at 80 hours a week on average, with on-call stretches of no more than 24 hours plus 4 for wrap-up. You average one day off a week and are never on call the night before an exam.

Responsibility grows in Phase 3. On the general medicine inpatient sub-internship at UNMC, for example, you admit, manage and discharge three to five patients as part of the resident team and work one to three overnight shifts. The student-run SHARING clinics offer free and low-cost care to underserved people in Omaha, and seniors can join them as a longitudinal elective of at least 24 evening clinic sessions.

Phase 1 blocks are graded Pass or Fail. The grade comes from a composite of medical knowledge exams (multiple-choice, short-answer and essay), application exams such as OSCEs and lab activities, and rubrics that score your small-group work and reflections. Each block's pass mark is recalculated every year from the previous three years' results and published in the syllabus.

Pass/fail does not mean your scores disappear. The college keeps your percentage scores to award scholarships and nominate students to Alpha Omega Alpha (AOA), the medical honor society. They also feed your Medical Student Performance Evaluation (MSPE), the letter that summarizes your record for residency programs. A failed block is remediated by retaking the weak assessments, but the first Fail stays on your transcript.

Most blocks set an exam about every two weeks, usually on a Friday, taken on your own device through the Examplify software.

Clerkships are graded Honors, High Pass, Pass or Fail from clinical evaluations, a National Board of Medical Examiners (NBME) subject exam, an OSCE, professionalism, attendance and assignments. Honors goes to the top 20% in each clerkship and High Pass to the next 30%. Subject exams, often called shelf exams, are national multiple-choice tests in each specialty. A score below the 5th percentile fails the clerkship; you can retake once within 90 days, but the best grade after a retake is Pass.

Acute Care and Clinical Transitions is pass/fail and needs a final grade of 80% and attendance that meets the Phase 2 policy. Departments grade Phase 3 electives Honors, High Pass, Pass, Marginal or Fail, or simply Pass/Fail, and the Residency Preparatory Course is pass/fail. Graduation also requires passing Comprehensive Clinical Skills Exam Part 2 and the mock code, current ACLS certification and registering for Step 2 CK.

Step 1 of the USMLE tests the science behind medicine and has been pass/fail since January 26, 2022; Step 2 CK tests clinical knowledge and decision-making. At UNMC you apply for Step 1 before the clerkship lottery in December of year 2. Miss that deadline and you are left out of the lottery and given a schedule from the places still open. You must sit Step 1 before the Acute Care and Clinical Transitions block that opens Phase 2, around late February of year 2. A passing result must reach the college by the last day of your first clerkship for you to continue.

• 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.
• The college's 2028-29 calendar is not yet published. On the current schedule, a 2027 entrant would study for Step 1 in January and February 2029 and sit it by about late February 2029, shortly after the switch.
• You sit Step 2 CK during Phase 3 at a time you choose and can request two days off a rotation to take it. For a 2027 entrant it would also fall after the switch.
• Comprehensive Clinical Skills Exam Part 1, an OSCE, is required during Acute Care and Clinical Transitions, before your first clerkship.
• Each year you also log your community service and complete a survey of extracurricular and scholarly activities; both are graduation requirements.
• You can graduate with Distinction by ranking in the upper 10 to 15% of your class or by earning honors on the optional MD thesis. High Distinction needs the upper 5%, or the upper 10 to 15% plus an honors thesis. Highest Distinction needs the upper 3 to 5% and an honors thesis.
• For MD students, attending an LCME-accredited school is what makes you eligible to sit the USMLE; students of osteopathic (DO) and eligible international schools qualify through other routes.

Phase 1 is campus-based, in Omaha or Kearney. You cannot switch campuses during Phase 1, and Kearney students are not required to travel to Omaha during it.

After acceptance you state a campus preference, and the college assigns campuses as closely to preferences as fairness allows. The Rural and Kearney Health Opportunities Programs (RHOP and KHOP) are UNMC's undergraduate pathway programs for students from rural Nebraska, at the Nebraska state colleges and the University of Nebraska at Kearney. If you come through one, that status is taken into account but does not guarantee Kearney, and you are not required to go there.

The catalog names Omaha sites for five of the six required clerkships. The main ones are Nebraska Medical Center, the Omaha VA Medical Center, Children's Nebraska (the catalog's Children's Hospital and Medical Center) and Methodist Health System hospitals. Rural Nebraska is part of the required year too: family medicine is spent with a rural preceptor, and some pediatrics students do their outpatient weeks with community preceptors outside Omaha.

A lottery in December of year 2 sets your clerkship schedule. For sites and teams, directors take your stated preferences into account and assign the rest randomly, and you can trade with a classmate within 7 days if the director approves.

The first Kearney class reaches clerkships in spring 2028. The college says every clerkship and department offers training at sites around the state, and that Kearney students will be able to do almost all clinical rotations outside the Omaha and Lincoln area. Kearney students are not limited to primary care: the full range of residency options is open to them. In September 2026 the dean wrote that community physicians in central Nebraska teach in Phase 1 or will teach in Phases 2 and 3.

For Kearney students, the college provides housing when a rotation site is more than about 30 minutes from where you already have housing, and offers housing in Omaha for rotations there. It advises having your own transportation for rotations in communities around the state, where patient care can run outside standard hours.

You need nine Phase 3 electives, at least six of them clinical and at least three of those sub-internships, and the rest can be any catalog course, including non-clinical ones. On the advanced emergency medicine sub-internship you work 16 shifts as an intern in the emergency departments at Nebraska Medical Center or Bellevue. Clinical neurology mixes inpatient and outpatient work with weekly conferences, and others include critical care, cardiology consults and the neonatal intensive care unit.

You can take up to three away rotations at other institutions, applied for through the Visiting Student Learning Opportunities (VSLO) service; a clinical away rotation counts as a sub-internship. Off-campus preceptorships, course 764 in every department, are four-week rotations with a volunteer faculty physician, usually at a private clinic in Nebraska. They also count as sub-internships but take at least eight weeks to set up.

International options include the International Health Elective, arranged through the Office of Global Engagement, a surgical global health elective in February and a pediatric global health elective in a low- or middle-income country. Intensive Spanish Language and Social Determinants of Health pairs three weeks of one-on-one online Spanish with University of Xalapa instructors in Mexico with a week in South Omaha.

Some electives leave the hospital. Field Epidemiology at Cedar Point is a three-week summer course at a University of Nebraska–Lincoln field station near Ogallala and Lake McConaughy, with about two-thirds of the time in the field and lab. You can also write a problem-based learning case for Phase 1 students, work as a teaching assistant, study literature and film, or train at the Nebraska Poison Center.

Two special clinical programs change the final year. The Primary Care Program, called the UNMC Primary Care Track by the internal medicine department, takes up to eight students a year, chosen in year 3. It aims to train primary care physicians for rural and underserved Nebraska.

The second is the Advanced Family Medicine Training Program. A family medicine department page, unchanged since at least early 2024, gives it four to six places a year for UNMC seniors. It requires a rural procedures fellowship and a commitment to practice in rural Nebraska.

UNMC offers three dual degrees. The MD-PhD Scholars Program, which holds a Medical Scientist Training Program (MSTP) award from the National Institutes of Health, takes seven to eight years. Training starts the summer before medical school with lab rotations to choose a research mentor. The program describes the PhD as beginning after the second year of medical school and lasting three to four years, followed by two years of clinical training.

MD-PhD students choose from seven interdisciplinary basic science programs in the College of Medicine and Eppley Cancer Institute, or programs in the colleges of pharmacy and public health. Some have earned PhDs at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln, in fields such as biomedical engineering. During the PhD years you follow a clinical mentor each semester, for four full days or eight half-days, and take part in the SHARING clinics.

The MD-MPH (Master of Public Health) and MD-MBA (Master of Business Administration) each take five years and need a separate application. The MPH has seven concentrations, from biostatistics and epidemiology to maternal and child health, all offered online or on campus. The MBA comes from the University of Nebraska at Omaha's College of Business Administration: 33 hours of graduate coursework, with some Phase 1 blocks counting toward a concentration in Health Care Management.

Research is open to every student. The paid Medical Student Summer Research Program gives rising second-year students eight weeks of research at about 40 hours a week. Each year during orientation, second- to fourth-year students can present at the Medical Student Research Showcase in the Davis Global Center, and students with an accepted conference abstract can apply for travel funding.

The MD honors thesis is your own research project under a faculty sponsor. You need to rank in the upper half of your class, with no grade below Pass after the first two years. The proposal is due by the first Monday of January in year 3 and the thesis by the same date in year 4, and a thesis awarded honors can earn graduation with distinction.

Enhanced Medical Education Tracks (EMETs) are optional concentrations in one field. You apply in your first semester, follow seminars, preceptorships or research with faculty mentors through years 1 to 3, and produce a capstone, such as a poster, in year 4. Tracks do not lengthen the program, completion is recorded on your transcript and in your MSPE, and dual-degree students are not eligible.

In Omaha the college is based in the Michael F. Sorrell Center. Across the street, the Dr. Edwin G. and Dorothy Balbach Davis Global Center is the headquarters of iEXCEL. Besides the virtual hospital, iEXCEL has replicated clinics and home care units, so you can practice moving a patient from home to hospital and back.

For complex anatomy, physiology and equipment, iEXCEL adds 3D CADWalls, interactive 2D iWalls, a holographic theater, head-mounted displays and a five-sided immersive CAVE. The Leon S. McGoogan Health Sciences Library serves both campuses, with an on-site library liaison in Kearney.

In Kearney, medical students learn in the Douglas A. Kristensen Rural Health Education Complex, shared with other UNMC and University of Nebraska at Kearney health programs. Its three-story Health Science Education Center II opened in January 2026, and the complex was formally opened in May 2026. Medical students there have large classrooms, small-group rooms, a gross anatomy lab, study space and a clinical simulation center with the same capabilities as Omaha's.

Each entering student is assigned a Director of Academic Advising (DAA), a practicing physician not involved in assessing students, who stays your academic advisor through Phases 1 and 2. You meet in the first weeks to go over a learning inventory and study plans, and again at set points. In Phase 3 your career specialty track director takes over most advising, though your DAA stays available.

At least once a year you also meet the associate dean or an assistant dean for student affairs to review your progress and talk about careers. Peer tutors from years 2 to 4 are assigned when advisors spot a need, or on request, and Counseling and Psychological Services helps with test anxiety, stress and academic difficulties.

In Kearney, advising meetings are mostly remote for now, backed by on-campus student affairs staff, a faculty academic advisor and tutoring. The campus has its own full-service student health clinic, staffed by professionals not involved in teaching medical students, and a wellness advocate. Elected class representatives meet faculty leaders several times a month, and a community leadership program pairs students with local mentors.

You can ask to change a supervisor, team, small group or site if you face mistreatment, unequal treatment, inadequate supervision, a conflict of interest or substantial hardship. Duty hour violations can be reported anonymously.