The USU Hébert School of Medicine MD program

After the Foundation in Medicine module, the six remaining pre-clerkship modules are organized by organ system, so science and clinical medicine are taught side by side. Across the seven modules, basic science faculty teach histology, cell biology, physiology, neuroscience, gross anatomy and embryology, stressing each topic's clinical and military relevance. Sessions range from lectures to labs, small-group problem solving and cadaveric dissection, with case-based learning throughout, though its share varies by module.

Clinical skills run alongside. Integrated Clinical Skills teaches you to take a history and examine a patient. Introduction to Clinical Reasoning uses lectures and small groups to build a differential diagnosis, the list of conditions that could explain a patient's problem. Point-of-care ultrasound, scanning at the bedside, is built into the modules, and about 25 hours of nutrition teaching sit mainly in the gastrointestinal module.

Military Medicine 100, which the MD program page calls Military Medical Practice and Leadership, runs through the whole pre-clerkship phase. It covers field medicine, military medical practice and leadership, from force health protection to team building and the military decision-making process. It also includes a full day of field training and military history at Antietam National Battlefield.

On the wards, clerkships use an apprentice model: you work directly with physicians in each specialty. The post-clerkship period follows the RIME model, moving you from reporting and interpreting clinical information to managing and educating patients.

USU's 2026 guide for prospective students says the curriculum will be modernized in coming years, with AI tools for self-paced pre-clerkship learning and more competency-based assessment. It says a pilot has started in the Neuroscience and Behavior module.

In the pre-clerkship phase, formal coursework, such as labs, lectures, small groups and clinical work, takes up to 26 hours a week. That generally leaves at least two, and typically three, half-days a week for independent study.

Officer life shapes the week too. You wear the uniform of the day to class, and your service tests your physical fitness twice a year. You get 30 days of leave a year but can take it only during official breaks, such as winter recess, spring break and summer leave.

On clerkships the week follows the hospital, with some fixed teaching. Medicine has weekly small-group sessions with a preceptor, psychiatry has weekly meetings with a psychiatrist and standardized-patient interview practice, and neurology has required virtual sessions on Wednesday afternoons.

Gross anatomy is taught inside the organ-system modules, so you study each region alongside the physiology and diseases of that system. The curriculum chart places an anatomy block, marked as dissection, in five modules: musculoskeletal, cardiopulmonary-renal, neuroanatomy and gastrointestinal in year 1, then reproductive and endocrine in year 2.

Teaching takes place in the Department of Surgery's Anatomical Teaching Laboratory, on the ground floor of Building A. First- and second-year students dissect cadavers there. The lab combines dissection with prosections, specimens that have already been dissected. It also uses computer-based teaching, simulation-lab models, interactive clinical discussions and focused-interest boot camps.

After the clerkships, senior electives include an advanced cadaver dissection review tailored to your planned specialty, an anatomical variations course for up to 20 fourth-years, and a neuroanatomy elective with head and neck dissection. In the anatomy teaching elective you teach dissection to first- and second-years as a junior faculty member and prepare prosections for them.

Clinical skills training and patient-care activities begin in the first week. Your first patients are standardized patients in the Clinical Skills Lab: in year 1 you learn to take their histories and examine them, and in year 2 you add clinical reasoning to each encounter.

The field practicums add a different kind of patient contact. Medical Field Practicum 101, in October of year 1, lets you experience being a patient in a simulated field setting. In later exercises you treat volunteers wearing cut suits, prosthetics that let you perform real procedures, such as inserting an IV line or making incisions, without harming them.

Full-time clinical work starts in January of year 2, after the week-long Transition to Clerkship course on your role in inpatient and outpatient care. From then on you look after active-duty service members, military retirees and their families, along with veterans at VA sites.

USU replaced letter grades with an Honors, Pass or Fail scale in 2011, so the pre-clerkship years are not simply pass/fail. All pre-clerkship modules except Foundation in Medicine, the required clerkships and the sub-internships are graded Honors, Pass or Fail. Foundation in Medicine, B3, post-clerkship electives and the Capstone are graded pass or fail only.

Each required activity has written grading criteria, and missing mandatory labs or small groups can be grounds for failing a course. Faculty also assess officer bearing, attitude and professionalism. Under a 2020 dean's policy, you receive narrative feedback in each required module and clerkship, wherever the teaching format allows. A Student Promotions Committee monitors progress, and you have 46 months from matriculation to finish.

On clerkships, a substantial part of your grade rests on how you care for patients and work in the ward team. Your histories and examinations, differential diagnoses, notes, communication and professionalism also count. So do shelf exams, national subject exams from the National Board of Medical Examiners (NBME).

The MD program FAQ says core shelf exams come at the end of each five-week rotation. The Psychiatry Department adds a combined assessment week after psychiatry and the two medicine rotations. In it you take the NBME subject exam and an objective structured clinical examination (OSCE), a circuit of timed stations with standardized patients. Each required advanced clerkship also ends with a shelf exam, usually on the last day at the rotation site.

To graduate you must pass USMLE Step 1 and Step 2 CK. Step 1 tests how you apply the basic sciences and has been reported only as pass or fail since January 26, 2022. Step 2 CK tests clinical knowledge, and your transcript shows it as a three-digit score. 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 the four-year MD in 2027 would sit Step 1 around January 2030 and Step 2 CK around April to September 2030, both after the switch. These are projections from the 2026-27 catalog and USU's curriculum chart, not published dates. Under the new model, the USMLE plans to publish Step exam dates more than a year before each calendar year.

• You must pass every part of the military medicine and emergency medicine curricula. Leadership is assessed by you, your peers and faculty, including in the field exercises. Operation Bushmaster is the culminating assessment of the military-unique curriculum.
• Third-year students are tested with standardized patients on specialty skills in pediatrics, obstetrics and gynecology, family medicine, psychiatry and surgery.
• Neurology requires nine core patients, a written assignment on two of them, a written exam and a clinical evaluation. Anesthesia uses a multiple-choice exam, graded observed encounters and the site director's evaluation.
• Early in your final year, the Office for Student Affairs prepares your Medical Student Performance Evaluation (MSPE), the summary letter sent with residency applications. You can contribute to it.
• The LCME directory, updated October 14, 2026, lists the program's accreditation as full, first granted in 1976, with the next survey in 2031-32. USU says the LCME renewed it for eight years in July 2024.
• LCME accreditation is what makes the program's students eligible to sit the USMLE.

The pre-clerkship phase is based in Bethesda, but the clerkship year takes every student to military hospitals around the country. You select the order and location of your core rotations through a lottery.

The school pays travel, lodging and, where authorized, per diem for core clerkships, core selectives and the required advanced clerkships. Sub-internships and advanced electives are not covered, except one interview rotation, paid apart from a rental car.

Walter Reed National Military Medical Center was formed in 2011 when Walter Reed Army Medical Center merged with the National Naval Medical Center. The Alexander T. Augusta Military Medical Center at Fort Belvoir, Virginia, was Fort Belvoir Community Hospital until its renaming in 2023.

Sites vary by specialty. Psychiatry sites include the Washington, DC area, Hawaii, San Diego, San Antonio, coastal Virginia, Fort Hood in Texas and Camp Lejeune in North Carolina, usually with two to four students per site. Every family medicine site is co-located with a full-service hospital that trains family medicine residents. The required emergency medicine clerkship uses military emergency departments plus civilian hospitals such as those in Columbia and Baltimore, Maryland, and Fairfax, Virginia.

In the clerkship year, the four-week core selective lets you try a specialty early, from options such as dermatology, radiology, urology, sports medicine, operational family medicine and several psychiatry selectives. An emergency medicine selective runs at Eglin and Keesler Air Force Bases, Womack Army Medical Center and Kaiser Permanente in San Diego.

After the clerkships, seven of the 12 advanced clinical rotation blocks are electives, or eight if you used your core selective for neurology or anesthesia. USU lists more than 140 course options at more than 40 sites worldwide. You can use the blocks for audition rotations at programs where you hope to train, civilian rotations, research or a Capstone, anatomy teaching, global health, international or operational medicine, or selected military schools.

You choose your two sub-internships with an adviser in the Office for Student Affairs. Any approved specialty that offers one counts, from family medicine and pediatric intensive care to trauma surgery and neurosurgery. Electives include Military and Operational Space Medicine, Disaster Medicine and Mass Casualty, Tropical Medicine, Forensic Anthropology, Forward Operating Pediatrics, and Foundations in Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning in Healthcare.

Operational electives include two-week mountain medicine courses in Vermont or Washington State, a two-week dive medicine course in Key West and the six-week Army Flight Surgeon Course. Clinical options include the Naval Special Warfare Center in Coronado, California, and the Special Operations Combat Medic course at Fort Bragg. A 12-day rotation at Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany follows casualty care from the battlefield back to the US.

In 2025-26, 52 students did family medicine operational and deployed rotations at 18 sites. Thirty-one of them went to eight sites outside the continental US, from Korea and Guam to Aviano Air Base in Italy and RAF Lakenheath in the UK. Surgery offers advanced rotations at 20 military hospitals in the US and overseas, plus trauma, burn and surgical critical care rotations through Washington Hospital Center and the University of Maryland Shock Trauma Center.

The Capstone is an optional research project of your choosing, with up to three months of the post-clerkship period set aside for it, not necessarily in one stretch. You line up a faculty mentor, a study design and approvals beforehand. Projects fall into four areas: laboratory research, clinical research, global health and military leadership, and educational research. The mentor grades it pass/fail, and more than 80% of the 2025 graduating class completed one.

The MD/PhD Physician Scientist program takes seven to eight years, and the program says more than 85% of students finish in seven. According to the 2026-27 catalog and the 2026 brochure, MD/PhD students are commissioned as O-1 officers on entry and owe nine years of active duty after residency, rather than seven. The PhD can be in emerging infectious diseases, molecular and cell biology, neuroscience or public health.

MD/PhD students complete two four-week lab rotations and the pre-clerkship curriculum, then take Step 1 before starting graduate work. On the current schedule, going by the program's 2022-23 handbook, a 2027 MD/PhD entrant would sit Step 1 around January or February 2029, just as the USMLE's move to designated testing dates takes effect.

Three or four years of research follow, with monthly return-to-clinic sessions and, in the first 18 months, advanced courses and a qualifying exam. You then rejoin the medical curriculum for Transition to Clerkship and the core clerkships.

Through the Department of Health Professions Education, selected students can earn a master's alongside the MD within four years on the MD/Master Joint Track. The options are a Master of Health Professions Education (MHPE) or a Master of Education in Health Professions Education (MEd-HPE), and medical students can also earn certificates in the field. USU's May 2026 commencement conferred MD/PhD, MD/MHPE, MD/MEd-HPE and MD/MPH degrees.

USU's 100-acre campus is about three miles from Washington, DC, near the National Library of Medicine. The MD program FAQ says there is no base housing for students: you find your own. USU strongly advises living as close to campus as you can.

Simulation happens at the Val G. Hemming Simulation Center, founded in 1999, at the Forest Glen Annex in Silver Spring, Maryland, rather than on the Bethesda campus. Its Clinical Skills Lab has 16 furnished exam rooms, each with three video cameras and microphones, around a central observation area. About 75 standardized patients, from infants to professional actors and retired teachers, can wear makeup, called moulage, to mimic illness or injury.

The Surgical and Procedural Skills Laboratory uses a full-scale operating and emergency room mock-up with manikin simulators. The center also has a Virtual Medical Environments lab and the Wide Area Virtual Environment (WAVE), an immersive space for training teams in combat and disaster skills. In all, the center delivers more than 38,000 hours of instruction to students, physicians and other health personnel.

The Office for Student Affairs supports you from orientation to graduation, with personal, academic and career advising, residency application advice for military and civilian matches, and a well-being program. It also oversees student government; each class elects officers, including two well-being representatives.

The Longitudinal Coaching Program pairs you with a faculty coach, civilian or active duty, for one-to-one meetings at regular intervals through all four years. Members of the Class of 2026, the first participants, said having a coach helped their well-being, their use of feedback on clinical skills and their accountability for their goals.

Within each class, students are organized into small teams that help and encourage one another. Through the student-created Rising Physicians Program, each first-year can find a mentor among the interns and residents at Walter Reed to guide them through the pre-clerkship phase.

Academic support includes peer and faculty tutoring, testing support and dashboards that show your progress in real time, plus counseling services. All medical students enroll with the University Family Health Center, run by the Department of Family Medicine, as their primary care clinic.