The Kirk Kerkorian School of Medicine at UNLV MD program

Phase 1 teaches the sciences that medicine rests on. Course names here follow the 2025-26 program sequence and the 2025 student handbook. The first semester lays foundations in Foundations of Medical Science and in Anatomy, Histology and Embryology. From January of year 1, integrated organ-system courses take each body system from normal development to disease and drug treatment.

Problem-based learning is a central part of the organ-system courses. In PBL a small group takes on a patient case, works out what it needs to learn and pieces together the diagnosis and care, much as a physician does within a healthcare team. Some basic science is taught through team-based learning (TBL), and courses also use lectures, labs and case discussions.

Three longitudinal courses run beside the organ systems. Foundations of Clinical Practice covers history-taking, examination and clinical reasoning; Analytics in Medicine covers biostatistics, epidemiology, ethics and evidence-based medicine; and Nevada Community Service pairs classes with service. Threads such as professionalism, nutrition, integrative medicine, legal issues in medicine and rural medicine run through the program, and culinary medicine is part of the curriculum.

Phase 1 workload is capped at 72 hours a week, averaged over four weeks: up to 24 contact hours plus 48 hours of required outside work such as assigned reading. You must attend every scheduled Phase 1 session in person, with up to six excused absence days a semester. In the clerkship year you must also attend clerkship school, teaching sessions held on Wednesday afternoons, according to the 2025 handbook. The attendance policy effective July 2025 allows up to 12 excused absence days in that year.

In a September 2026 news story, the school's assistant dean for anatomical education said the program had moved from a virtual-only model. Students now learn through human body dissection, plastinated specimens (real tissue preserved with plastic) and immersive technology, with a focus on clinically relevant anatomy.

You are introduced to the dissection lab with an emphasis on respect for donors. You start with guided prosection labs, then progress to hands-on dissection, learning about human variation and how to handle tissue. The MD program page places prosection in Phase 1 and dissection in Phases 2 and 3.

In the 2025-26 sequence, the first-semester course Anatomy, Histology and Embryology uses prosected and plastinated specimens, models, digital cryosections (images of thin slices through a frozen body) and Sectra virtual anatomy tables. On a Sectra table you move a cutting plane through a digital body and compare it with CT and MRI scans. You also learn to read X-rays, CT, MRI and ultrasound.

Anatomy returns in each organ-system course, taught together with radiology, histology and embryology. You have round-the-clock access to the Sectra tables, with immersive virtual reality dissections as another way to study. Anatomy ends with the Service of Gratitude, a yearly student-run ceremony, attended by donors' families and faculty, that honors the people who donated their bodies.

In year 4 you can take an advanced clinical anatomy elective with detailed dissections, imaging study, prosection demonstration videos and teaching junior students. The school is also developing an Anatomical Gift Program for body donation.

Your first clinical work is the Immersion course's EMT training, described above, in your first weeks. Foundations of Clinical Practice starts in the same semester, with standardized patient encounters and skills sessions. It builds over three semesters to Transition to Clerkships in March of year 2, and in Phase 1 you also work through high-fidelity manikin scenarios in the simulation center.

Real patients also come through service. Your learning community volunteers at the UNLV Community Clinic, which the school runs with Volunteers in Medicine of Southern Nevada at the Ruffin Family Clinic. There, faculty physicians, residents and students give free care to underserved people in Las Vegas.

Full-time clinical work begins with the clerkships in late March or April of year 2. On internal medicine, for example, the ward team is an attending physician, senior residents, interns, one or two medical students and a pharmacy student. A faculty member, fellow or resident supervises all your patient care.

Every Phase 1 course is graded pass/fail, and courses taught in groups of ten or fewer also include written narrative assessments. In the science courses, each block ends with a summative exam (one that counts toward passing the semester) using retired NBME questions, and a cumulative final makes up 25% of each semester's score. You pass a semester with a weighted score of 75% or more, or by passing a remediation exam taken one to two weeks after grades come out.

Failing a single exam puts you on academic warning, which stays off your transcript. Failing a remediation brings academic probation, which appears on your transcript and in your Medical Student Performance Evaluation (MSPE), the dean's letter sent with residency applications.

OSCEs test your clinical skills through Phase 1, and the clerkship year closes with an OSCE in March of year 3 that the 2025-26 sequence describes as formative, meaning it is for feedback. To enter Phase 3 you must pass every clerkship and selective, attend all clerkship school sessions and complete the required Phase 2 OSCEs.

Core clerkships are graded Honors, High Pass or Pass, and selectives pass/fail. For most clerkships, half the grade is the NBME shelf exam, taken in the rotation's last week, and half is clinical evaluations from attendings and residents. Passing requires at least the 5th percentile on the shelf exam and an average of 3.0 out of 5 on both the clinical evaluation and its professionalism part.

USMLE Step 1 tests the basic sciences and has been reported pass/fail since January 2022. Under the 2025 handbook, you must take it before starting Phase 2, by deadlines the school issues each year, and pass it for formal promotion. Step 2 CK must be taken by October 30 of the year before you graduate, and only after you have passed every clerkship. You must pass it by February 1 of the year you graduate to be certified for the residency Match, and by April 1 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 July 2027 would sit Step 1 around March 2029, at the end of the January-to-March study block, shortly after the switch. Step 2 CK would follow in spring 2030, in the study weeks that end the clerkship year, so both sittings fall after the switch.

• Three USMLE failures in any combination, or not passing Step 1 or Step 2 CK within 12 months of a first attempt, make you subject to dismissal.
• If you fail Step 1 after starting clerkships, you may finish your current rotation or step out to prepare, but you cannot start a new one.
• You must complete the MD within six years, not counting time in an approved formal degree program.
• In Phase 3, sub-internships are graded Honors, High Pass, Pass or Fail, and other courses pass/fail.

Your clinical training is based in Las Vegas-area hospitals and clinics. UMC, a county hospital and academic medical center that anchors the Las Vegas Medical District, is the school's primary training hospital and calls itself the school's anchor partner.

The clerkship descriptions name settings for internal medicine and psychiatry. Internal medicine puts you on inpatient wards for four weeks at UMC and two at the VA medical center. Psychiatry uses two clinical sites, three weeks at each, and the psychiatry department says medical students are part of the team at UNLV Health Mojave Counseling, its clinic for people with severe mental illness.

The 2025 handbook lists further hospital partners across the valley in teaching students, residents and fellows. UNLV Health, the school's clinical practice, offers care in family medicine, internal medicine, obstetrics and gynecology, pediatrics, psychiatry, surgery, and ear, nose and throat.

Clerkship schedules are set centrally. You can first raise conflicts, such as a conflict of interest or a need for accommodations. The class is then scheduled at random, and you have one week to swap your whole schedule with a classmate. For Phase 3 you request electives and sites, assigned by capacity, graduation requirements and intended specialty. Clinical weeks are capped at 80 hours, averaged over four weeks.

Choice begins in the clerkship year: besides required inpatient neurology, your other two selectives are assigned by preference and availability, from options such as gastroenterology, orthopedic surgery and emergency medicine.

Most choice comes in Phase 3: at least four months of clinical electives and away rotations, which the 2025 handbook plans as six or seven four-week blocks. Each elective lasts two to four weeks. Non-clinical electives are optional and can be a new research project, skills training such as anatomical dissection, or study in an area of concentration.

School electives span surgery, internal medicine, pediatrics, psychiatry, family medicine, obstetrics and gynecology, emergency medicine, dermatology, forensic pathology, ophthalmology, radiology, research and medical education.

Away rotations are electives at other medical schools, listed in the national Visiting Student Learning Opportunities (VSLO) catalog or the host school's own catalog. They are allowed only in Phase 3, after Phases 1 and 2 and a passed Step 1, for up to 12 weeks. Up to four weeks can be international, but these earn no credit toward graduation and need evacuation and repatriation insurance.

No away or international rotations are allowed in March, when you must be in Las Vegas for Match Week, or during Capstone. The school advises against scheduling the required sub-internship, ICU or Nevada Community Medicine rotations from November to January, the usual residency interview season.

The school offers two dual degrees: an MD and Master of Business Administration (MD/MBA) with UNLV's Lee Business School, and an MD and Master of Public Health (MD/MPH) with its School of Public Health. Both are step-out years: after Phase 1 and a passing Step 1 score, you take a leave of absence for a year of MBA or MPH study, then return to clerkship preparation and rotations. You must be admitted to both programs.

In the 2026-27 graduate catalog, the MBA is 30 credits, including six core courses and a strategic management capstone. The MPH has five tracks: social and behavioral health; environmental and global health; health care administration and policy; biostatistics and epidemiology; and an online generalist track. Up to 12 MPH credits can be shared with the medical school, and you finish by defending a professional paper.

Research is built in for everyone. Across Analytics in Medicine 1 you review the literature, design a project, gather and analyze data and refine your scientific writing, which meets the program's minimum research requirement. The course's last four weeks are a research immersion in methods, research ethics, data analysis and the use of artificial intelligence in research. A scholarly project begun in Phase 1 gives you first-hand experience of the scientific method under faculty guidance.

Beyond that, research is optional. The summer after year 1 can go to research preparation, the office of medical student research matches students with faculty mentors and advises on funding, and the school holds a yearly research symposium. You can also take a non-clinical research elective in Phase 3, or an academic leave of absence for research training or another degree.

Teaching takes place in the Kirk Kerkorian Medical Education Building, a five-story, 135,000-square-foot building at 625 Shadow Lane. The school's first permanent building, it was finished two years after its October 2020 groundbreaking, paid for by donors to the Nevada Health and Bioscience Corporation. Faculty and student support offices are in the same building, and new students receive an iPad at orientation.

The first floor holds the simulation and clinical skills center, the virtual anatomy lab with its Sectra tables and ultrasound training, and the prosection lab. The second floor has learning studios for cohorts of up to 120 and the Dr. Barbara Atkinson Forum, named for the founding dean. The third floor has the PBL rooms and the Academic Success center for tutoring and study help.

The School of Medicine Library, on the third and fourth floors, is open around the clock by card access. A September 2026 UNLV story says more than 97% of its collection is digital, but that it keeps about 400 print books in medical humanities, adding roughly 60 to 80 a year. These include graphic medicine, which tells health stories through comics. The fourth floor also has a student gym, a quiet well-being room, a lounge and most of the study rooms.

Every student belongs to one of four learning communities: Mt. Charleston, Lake Mead, Red Rock and Sunrise Mountain. Started in July 2023 with the Class of 2027 and planned to include all four classes by 2026, they provide structured mentorship and professionalism activities through all four years.

Academic support begins around the start of school with one-on-one appointments to build study habits. A director and two learning specialists help with study plans, and the 2nd Aid Peer Tutor program offers group and one-on-one tutoring, including USMLE-style practice questions. A four-year career guidance program adds workshops and one-on-one advising with the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) Careers in Medicine resources.

Confidential counseling is available through UNLV Health Mojave Counseling and UNLV's Counseling and Psychological Services (CAPS), included in the medical student health and wellness fee. The providers who see medical students have no teaching or grading role. Each class elects a well-being representative, and through My MD-to-Be the people who support you can get regular emails about what you are going through.