The Nova Southeastern University Dr. Kiran C. Patel College of Allopathic Medicine MD program

NSU describes its curriculum as integrated, with basic science and clinical courses taught together and problem- and case-based learning in small groups and teams. Groups have seven or eight students, who solve medical problems by inquiry under the direction of a faculty facilitator.

In Foundations I the group work is problem-based learning: your group starts from a patient case, works out what it needs to learn and then learns it. Foundations II uses Inquiry (IQ) cases, which the handbook defines as case-based learning. In both, the week's theme also runs through Practice of Medicine (POM) clinical skills sessions, anatomy and other active learning sessions.

From April of year 2 the teaching moves into hospitals and clinics, where you join teams under faculty supervision, often with residents. Pediatrics adds formal didactic sessions each week, and obstetrics and gynecology sets aside weekly time for assigned core teaching cases. In year 4, Transition to Residency uses small groups, simulation and reflection exercises to prepare you for work as an intern.

Interprofessional education means training with students of other health professions. On campus you learn alongside students training as pharmacists, nurses, speech-language pathologists, physical therapists, occupational therapists and other health professionals. AIR weeks also include interprofessional activities.

The 2025-26 handbook caps scheduled activities before clerkships at seven half-days a week, keeping on average three half-days free for independent study. These activities include lectures, labs, small groups, clinical experiences and exams. Pre-clerkship students generally have weekends free of scheduled activities. The same handbook says you must attend required activities, including interactive large-group sessions, labs, small-group discussions, clinical experiences and exams; attendance rules for lectures vary by block, course or clerkship.

Clinical rotations are much heavier. The handbook says clerkship students may spend up to 80 hours a week on clerkship activities, including evenings, weekends and holidays, and are not automatically off on official holidays. Its duty-hours policy averages that 80-hour limit over four weeks, requires one day in seven free and caps continuous scheduled duty at 24 hours, plus up to four hours for handoffs and education.

Anatomy is built into Foundations I and II: each week's theme runs through anatomy sessions as well as the small-group case and clinical skills. Foundations I lists anatomy, embryology and histology among its core subjects. Its objectives include describing the major organs with their arterial supply, venous and lymphatic drainage and nerve supply, and describing anatomical landmarks on routine X-ray images.

Foundations II then links normal and diseased anatomy to imaging, including ultrasound, X-ray, CT, MRI, angiography and endoscopy. Second-year students also run Peer Assisted Learning sessions on topics such as anatomy.

For senior students, the 2025-26 catalog lists a two-credit Upper Extremity Applied Anatomy Elective for those interested in orthopedic surgery, rheumatology, sports medicine, primary care or plastic surgery. It involves a series of dissections of the hand, wrist and forearm on a human cadaver, with reading and faculty discussion of common clinical conditions.

NSU says you build clinical skills from day one and begin clinical immersion in year 1. In Foundations I you learn to establish a doctor-patient relationship, take a hypothesis-driven history, examine patients with attention to communication and correct technique, and document the encounter. The program uses simulated patients as well as real-world examples.

The 2025-26 handbook says the college assigns pre-clerkship students to clinical preceptors, clinicians who supervise students, with a set window to swap if a classmate agrees. Full-time clinical work starts with Clerkship Block 1 in April of year 2, once you have passed Step 1.

Pre-clerkship courses are graded Pass or Fail: a pass means every competency reached at least a satisfactory level. Clerkships and electives are graded Honors, High Pass, Pass or Fail, and NSU does not calculate a grade point average (GPA). Courses and clerkships are mapped to NSU's seven competencies, from medical knowledge and patient care to personal and professional development and wellness.

Under the 2025-26 handbook, most written exams are secure, timed web-based exams, proctored in class, and they include both internal exams and exams from the NBME. Faculty write narrative assessments in most courses, and clerkship grading narratives go word for word into your Medical Student Performance Evaluation (MSPE), the dean's letter used in residency applications.

Under the same handbook, required clerkship grades combine four parts. Clinical ratings count for 30 to 45 percent, and the NBME subject exam, or shelf exam, for 30 percent, with a 5th-percentile minimum. An end-of-clerkship skills assessment such as an OSCE or oral exam counts for 15 percent, and other work such as case write-ups makes up the rest. A grading committee sets the cut-offs from a target distribution of grades, and if the shelf exam is the only part you fail, you may retake it once.

The 2025-26 handbook says NSU does not report class rank. The college calculates class standing internally only to decide eligibility for Alpha Omega Alpha (AOA), the national honor society for medical students, and other academic honors. The handbook also has you sit the NBME Comprehensive Basic Science Examination at the end of the pre-clerkship curriculum, a self-check for Step 1 that does not affect grades.

The USMLE is the three-step exam series that M.D. graduates must pass to be licensed in the United States. Step 1, on the sciences behind medicine, has been pass/fail since January 2022. NSU's curriculum schematic, updated September 24, 2026, allows it from January 1 of year 2 until the Saturday before Health Systems Science and Advanced Clinical Skills starts. The 2025-26 handbook requires a pass before clerkship rotations, though you may start that course with your score pending.

Under the same handbook, Step 2 CK, on clinical knowledge, must be taken by August 1 at the start of year 4, so scores arrive before residency applications. A pass must be documented by April 15 of your graduation year, or graduation is delayed. You must be enrolled at NSU MD to sit either exam, and failing either three times means automatic dismissal. NSU also offers Independent Study: Step 2 Preparation, a self-paced course for Step 2 CK study guided by a faculty director.

• On the current schedule, a student entering in 2027, the Class of 2031, would sit Step 1 between January 1 and March 3, 2029. The Step 2 CK deadline would be August 1, 2030.
• 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. Your Step 1 window opens in January 2029, the month the change is due to take effect, and your Step 2 CK deadline falls after it.
• The USMLE program says it will publish each year's testing dates more than a year ahead, and it has encouraged schools to review policies that restrict when students take the Step exams.
• For M.D. students, attending an LCME-accredited program is what makes you eligible to sit the USMLE; D.O. students and international graduates qualify through other routes.

HCA East Florida Division, which NSU calls its preferred hospital partner, provides the core clerkships and many electives at several HCA hospitals on Florida's southeast coast. NSU says HCA East Florida employs more than 6,000 physicians across its 14 hospitals, surgery and imaging centers, freestanding emergency facilities and a regional lab. Several other regional hospitals host electives.

One HCA hospital is on your campus: the handbook's campus map shows HCA Florida University Hospital on the Fort Lauderdale/Davie campus, in Broward County. For pediatrics, NSU is affiliated with Nemours Children's Hospital in Lake Nona, Orlando, in Central Florida, where students rotate. Nemours describes it as an accredited training institution with a pediatric residency program.

Under the 2025-26 handbook, before clerkships you submit preferences for clerkship track options. An algorithm overseen by the Office of Curricular Affairs then assigns tracks, followed by a set window for agreed swaps. Third- and fourth-year schedules are built through a lottery within the academic calendar. After the deadline, the only formal ground for a change is a supervising physician who has treated you or knows you personally; other requests are decided case by case.

During the clerkship blocks you take one four-week selective. The current list covers anesthesia, cardiology, dermatology, infectious disease, nephrology, neurology, neonatal intensive care, ophthalmology, pathology, pulmonology and urology. Surgical options are a subspecialty service (orthopedics, plastics, burn or surgical oncology), trauma surgery and surgical critical care, or the surgical intensive care unit.

A sub-internship, also called an acting internship, is a four-week rotation in which you act as an intern on an inpatient team under senior residents and attending physicians. One is required, in internal medicine, surgery or pediatrics; current pediatrics sections are listed at Palms West and Nemours Children's Hospital.

Electives fill most remaining blocks in years 3 and 4. The 2025-26 catalog requires at least 24 elective credit hours, including at least 12 in direct patient care and at least 4 in high-acuity care, meaning care of very sick or unstable patients. No more than 8 can come from one specialty. Clinical options include emergency medicine at Aventura, Kendall or St. Lucie, critical care, palliative care and sports medicine.

Nonclinical electives include Leadership in Medicine, Culinary Medicine, MedCast, where you record podcast stories about medical school, and Advanced Health System Science on healthcare administration. The Legal and Medical Interprofessionalism Elective brings medical and law students together for 13 evening classes taught with faculty of NSU's Shepard Broad College of Law.

Away electives are rotations at other institutions, and the catalog lists a long run of them, from aerospace medicine to vascular surgery. If you need something NSU and its affiliates do not offer, the Student-Designed Clinical Elective lets you propose a rotation with your own supervisor. Apply at least 90 days ahead, because NSU must first sign an affiliation agreement with the site.

Research is a graduation requirement. You complete MDR 9000 Research, a four-week project supervised by a researcher and approved in advance by the course director, either in June of year 1 or in a later block. Basic science, translational, medical education and clinical projects all qualify, and you finish with an abstract and a poster presentation.

To go further, the MDR 9001 Research Elective continues or extends a project and ends with a draft paper and a plan for submitting it to a chosen journal. A Research Thread Director helps you find opportunities such as awards funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Through the Moffitt Cancer Translation Research Rotation, NSU MD sponsors six students every summer at Moffitt Cancer Center in Tampa Bay.

Each fall, students present at NSU's Research, Innovation and Service in Education (RISE) Conference. Faculty research areas include population health, cancer therapeutics and biomarkers, medical education and neuroscience. Your faculty adviser can also guide you toward summer research, yearlong research fellowships and additional NSU degrees during medical school.

One entry route links the M.D. to NSU's undergraduate degrees. The Dual Admission program in allopathic medicine lets first-time college students reserve a seat in this M.D. program, though they still complete a graduate application later. It takes six years (2+4, by invitation only), seven (3+4) or eight (4+4), and the six- and seven-year tracks award the bachelor's degree after the first year of medical school.

Most on-campus teaching is in NSU's health professions complex, which has lecture halls, small-group rooms, the anatomy lab and clinical skills rooms. The PBL rooms are for M.D. students only: you can study in them with your key card whenever no class is running. The same building has 13 bookable study rooms.

The Martin and Gail Press Health Professions Division Library is a short walk from the classrooms. It has more than 17,000 print volumes, more than 8,000 journal subscriptions, a librarian dedicated to NSU MD research and the Idea Labs, with virtual reality technology and a 3-D printer. NSU's five-story Alvin Sherman Library adds 22 study rooms and 1,000 seats.

The Aventura emergency medicine elective includes a full day of off-campus simulation at the Broward College Health Sciences Simulation Center. NSU also lends students iPads and laptops for academic use.

From enrollment you have a faculty adviser, who meets you regularly, tracks your academic progress and helps with course and clerkship schedules, specialty choice and the residency match. The 2025-26 handbook adds a mandatory meeting during orientation, plus frequent group lunches and one-on-one meetings in the fall of year 1. During that fall, advisers look out for students who may need extra help.

Each first-year student also gets a peer mentor, a second-year student vetted by the advisers and the student affairs office. In Peer Assisted Learning (PAL), second-years who did well in a course lead sessions for first-years on topics such as anatomy, immunology and biochemistry. Faculty tutoring is free, and the Director of Student Success and Learning Excellence coaches study skills, test strategy, time management and test anxiety.

Career advising follows the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) Careers in Medicine program. Required sessions run in years 1 to 3, from self-assessments in year 1 to using clerkships to explore specialties in year 3. Your adviser also helps you judge your competitiveness for different fields.

For your own health care, NSU offers a medical center staffed by board-certified doctors and physician assistants, with physical exams, women's health care, immunizations, general medical care and minor surgical procedures. NSU's counseling center has office hours plus a crisis hotline staffed 24 hours a day, all year round. Records from both services are confidential and held entirely apart from your academic records.