The Vanderbilt University School of Medicine MD program

Learning in the pre-clerkship phase centers on clinical cases. On Monday, Wednesday and Friday mornings your group of eight or nine students meets a faculty facilitator to review a case linked to the current block and discuss possible diagnoses and treatments. You research the gaps on your own, then piece the clues together to reach a final diagnosis.

Lectures, team-based learning and labs fill the other scheduled sessions. General lectures are optional unless a course says otherwise, but the school strongly encourages them, since many topics are taught only in lectures and many exam questions draw on them. Small groups, labs and exams are compulsory.

In year 2 teaching moves onto the wards, where each clerkship runs its own rounds, conferences and case discussions. Twice in every eight-week block the class reunites for an FCC Longitudinal Day. You spend 90 minutes in a small group on a patient case whose problems, such as housing insecurity, cross specialties, and hear a 60-minute talk. Then you debrief for 90 minutes with your college, one of four advisory groups you join at orientation.

In the Immersion Phase, Integrated Science Courses mix classroom and clinical learning and are expected to use active methods, such as simulation and team-based or case-based learning, rather than traditional lectures. Advanced clinical experiences (ACEs) are month-long rotations in one specialty. In an acting internship, also called a sub-internship, you work at the level of an intern, a doctor in the first year of residency.

The school's sample first-year week runs 8 a.m. to noon and 1 to 5 p.m. Monday and Wednesday mornings open with your case-based group, then a large or medium group session or lab; on Friday the case group is followed by Learning Communities, discussions led by your college mentors. Tuesday and Thursday mornings hold group sessions or labs.

Afternoons in the sample: Monday is clinic, Tuesday starts with physical diagnosis, Wednesday and Thursday are for self-directed learning, and Friday has a group session or lab, then physical diagnosis. Clinic and hospital bedside sessions come about once a month each, not weekly (2025-26 faculty guide). Required first-phase activity is capped at 30 hours a week, counting preparation such as two hours for each case.

• About once a month, Wednesday afternoons bring interprofessional sessions with nursing, pharmacy, counseling, marriage and family therapy, and social work students (2025-26 faculty guide).
• Up to three personal days are allowed in the first phase, one per block at most, but not for exams, first days or the last class before a block exam.
• The Medical Scientist Training Program (MSTP), the MD/PhD program, posts a similar sample week with a Wednesday lunchtime seminar and a Thursday afternoon continuity clinic.

Anatomy is taught within the science blocks rather than as a separate course. Human Blueprint & Architecture introduces it. Homeostasis, Renal & Digestion and Reproduction & Endocrine include labs on the gross and microscopic anatomy of their organ systems, and Brain, Behavior & Movement covers the nervous system.

The Year 1 page names gross anatomy dissection as part of the first year, and anatomy faculty must have experience teaching in a gross anatomy lab. The MSTP's sample week shows two-hour anatomy or histology labs on Tuesday and Thursday mornings in groups of four or five. Cadavers for anatomical teaching come through Vanderbilt's Anatomical Donation Program, from donors in the middle Tennessee region.

The Gross Anatomy Lab, added in 2007 mainly for medical students' initial training, fills the tenth floor of the Vanderbilt Imaging Building. Each of its 27 workstations has lights, cameras and a 37-inch high-definition monitor, and demonstrations can be shown on every screen.

Anatomy returns later, starting with a neuroanatomy quiz in the neurology clerkship. Years 3 and 4 offer a Medical Imaging and Anatomy course, cadaver-based procedure labs in Emergency Care and, in an elective for future surgeons, operative anatomy through cadaveric dissection.

Patient contact begins within weeks through FPR: Patient Care. With a Clinical Skills Teacher from the Department of Medicine, you interview and examine patients admitted to VUMC or the Veterans Affairs (VA) hospital. The 2025-26 faculty guide plans about a dozen two-hour sessions a year, plus practical exams in January and July.

You also have an outpatient clinical home, a preceptor's clinic that the same guide schedules about 12 times over the year. You start by shadowing, then take histories, examine patients, present your findings and join discussions about diagnoses and next steps. Standardized patients in CELA give you practice and feedback alongside.

Shade Tree Clinic, a free clinic that medical students have run since 2004 for uninsured and underinsured people in the Nashville area, offers more patient contact. Pre-clerkship students volunteer as interpreters and patient health educators; second- to fourth-years run the clinic and its outreach.

From year 2 you work full time on clinical teams. Required clinical and educational work is then capped at 80 hours a week, with one day off in seven, in line with national guidelines for residents.

Assessment is competency-based across six domains: patient care, knowledge for practice, practice-based learning and improvement, interpersonal and communication skills, systems-based practice, and professionalism. Exams, observed encounters, narrative comments and workplace-based assessments, quick ratings you request from supervisors who watched you work, feed an electronic portfolio that you review with your portfolio coach.

The first two phases are pass/fail. In the Immersion Phase, ACEs, integrated science courses, acting internships and research immersions are graded Honors, High Pass, Pass or Fail, and advanced electives and PLAN are pass/fail. Serious concern in one domain that persists despite coaching can bring a failing grade even when the rest of your work is satisfactory.

Each year 1 block ends with a pass/fail exam, with self- and peer assessment and narrative feedback alongside. Each clerkship ends with a shelf exam, a standardized national subject test from the National Board of Medical Examiners (NBME). Near the end of year 2 you take an End of Clerkship Observed Structured Clinical Exam (OSCE) in CELA, where faculty observe you and give feedback on history-taking, communication and clinical reasoning.

The Liaison Committee on Medical Education (LCME) accredits MD programs in the United States; its directory, updated July 22, 2026, lists Vanderbilt with full accreditation and a next survey in 2028-29. For an MD program, LCME accreditation is what makes its students eligible for the USMLE. Step 1, on the sciences basic to medicine, has been pass/fail since January 26, 2022; Step 2 Clinical Knowledge (CK) tests clinical knowledge for supervised patient care.

Degree requirements approved June 25, 2026 say you take Step 1 or Step 2 CK, your choice, before the Immersion Phase orientation and the other by February 1 of your final year. You must take both to graduate. The catalog sets a mandatory two-month study period in July and August; the Milestones page instead describes a six-week Step 1 study period opened by a Boards Bash.

In August 2026 the USMLE program announced a move to designated testing dates from January 2029, with Step exams offered less often each year. The start date had already moved once, from 2028. On the current schedule, a 2027 entrant, due to graduate in 2031, would take the first Step in July or August 2029 and the second by February 1, 2031. Both fall after the switch. The school's 2027-28 catalog and calendars are not yet published.

• Year 2 also brings milestone ratings from residents and faculty, at least two workplace-based assessment requests a week, Vital Experience logs and simulations in CELA. Repeatedly falling short on requests or logs lowers your domain ratings.
• Immersion courses rate you against milestones: threshold means meeting some expectations but not all, target meeting all of them, and reach going further. Integrated science courses add test and project scores; you must pass both parts.
• Entrustable Professional Activities (EPAs) are core tasks, such as entering orders or handing over a patient, that you should manage without direct supervision on day one of residency; acting internships rate four.
• A week-long set of simulated scenarios with standardized patients in CELA assesses readiness for residency. The 2025-26 faculty guide describes a third-year EPA week in late February or early March: a four-hour simulated case admitting a patient from the emergency department.
• Professionalism changed for 2026-27. It had been rated on milestones like the other domains; a deans' message of August 4, 2026 replaced them with three yes-or-no questions on demeanor and duty, honesty and transparency, and respect and sensitivity. Any no needs a written note, and professionalism can no longer earn a reach rating.
• From the class entering in 2026, one promotion committee follows each class for four years, meeting three times a phase. It can require probation or remediation when a competency domain falls short, even if you pass every course.

Every student is based in Nashville, with no regional campuses. VUMC's major facilities are within close walking distance of your classrooms, and other training sites are in the greater Nashville area. VUMC has been a separate not-for-profit corporation since 2016, clinically and academically affiliated with the university. Clerkships are block rotations, not a longitudinal integrated clerkship (LIC), in which students follow the same patients across specialties for months.

Clerkship and course directors assign sites, and for broader exposure to patients they may send you away from campus. Be ready to travel up to 35 miles each way, at most 70 miles a day, by your own transport and at your own cost. You can appeal an assignment in writing for extenuating circumstances, and some sites, such as the VA, have extra requirements.

Course descriptions name the core sites. Medicine and surgery use Vanderbilt University Hospital and the VA hospital, which sits alongside VUMC. Pediatrics is based at Monroe Carell Jr. Children's Hospital at Vanderbilt, with outpatient weeks at Vanderbilt, Meharry and community pediatrician clinics. Psychiatry uses Vanderbilt Psychiatric Hospital, consult services at VUMC and the children's hospital, and emergency psychiatry.

Rotations also run at Vanderbilt Health One Hundred Oaks, where students can request parking, and in community clinics such as Shade Tree, Siloam and Matthew Walker. The catalog's principal clinical education affiliates include the Vanderbilt Bedford, Clarksville (acquired in 2026), Tullahoma-Harton and Wilson County hospitals, Vanderbilt Health Williamson County and Vanderbilt Stallworth Rehabilitation Hospital. No clerkship description places students at these.

Year 2 includes two two-week electives, and you can ask to skip one for a compelling reason. The 2026-27 catalog lists 40, from emergency medicine and point-of-care ultrasound to palliative care and wilderness medicine. A Careers in Medicine elective lets you shadow physicians of your choice for nine days, no more than three with any one.

In years 3 and 4 the Immersion Phase is largely elective within set requirements. Advanced electives are more classroom-based than ACEs and acting internships, and pass/fail. Three of your 15 blocks are interest-driven rotations of any type, including up to two away rotations, with at least one clinical.

Examples include integrated science courses in Cardiovascular Disease, Infectious Diseases, Clinical Informatics and How Doctors Think; ACEs from Undiagnosed Diseases to Trauma; and advanced electives such as Narrative Medicine and Students as Teachers. Your primary care block can be outpatient pediatrics, internal medicine, family medicine or internal medicine-pediatrics; your acute care block is emergency medicine or ICU-based.

You arrange away rotations through the Association of American Medical Colleges' Visiting Student Learning Opportunities (VSLO) service, and the host needs an affiliation agreement with Vanderbilt. They normally last four weeks; a three-week rotation counts only if no four-week one exists, after a petition and a grand rounds-style talk.

For global health, one integrated science course is spent entirely at a Vanderbilt partner site, in countries including Guatemala, Jordan, Kenya and Peru, or at one you propose. An advanced elective takes you to a site you arrange in a low- or middle-income country, and a telehealth elective links you with partner clinics in Kenya and nearby countries.

Research is a graded part of the MD. CASE, in year 1, teaches you to appraise research papers in seven two-hour Friday sessions from mid-October to mid-December. In Discovery, in year 2, most students choose a mentor and project in one of four areas: Bench2Bedside lab research, community and global health, epidemiology and informatics, or ethics, education, policy and society.

To enter PLAN you need an approved proposal and IRB or IACUC approval, the ethics reviews for research with people or animals. PLAN turns the proposal into a full plan, and Research Immersion gives you three to six four-week blocks of full-time work, with weekly research-area meetings. Going beyond three months needs good standing and approval, and a sixth month also uses a flex month. A research director assesses your journal, abstract and poster or talk.

The Medical Scholars Program offers a competitive, fully funded 12-month fellowship with a $30,000 stipend (subject to change), health insurance and a $1,500 conference allowance, for research anywhere in the world. This research track makes the MD five years.

The Medical Scientist Training Program awards an MD and a PhD: two MD years, clerkships included, then three to four years of PhD research in one of 16 programs, then one Immersion year. The MSTP pages give a typical seven years and an average of 7.5; the catalog counts seven to eight. MSTP students take a Step exam within eight weeks of finishing their clerkships.

Other dual degrees add a master's or professional degree, usually after three MD years; you can apply at any point in those three years. The opportunities page lists the M.D./J.D., M.D./M.S. in Biomedical Informatics, M.D./M.Div., M.D./M.T.S., M.D./M.Ed., M.D./M.P.H., M.D./MBA, M.D./M.A. in Medicine, Health, and Society, and M.D./M.Eng. in Surgery and Intervention. Most take five years in all; the J.D. and M.Div. take six. The catalog's dual degree page, reviewed April 10, 2026, omits the M.D./M.A., which its June 2026 degree requirements still list.

The M.D./M.P.H. can start after year 2 or 3, and M.D./MBA students spend year 4 at the Owen Graduate School of Management and year 5 in both schools. The M.D./M.Eng. fills a gap year between years 3 and 4.

• Medical Innovators Development Program (MIDP): a four-year MD track in health care innovation, with weekly seminars throughout and an Innovation Activism course in year 2. In year 3 the IDEA Lab replaces PLAN and Research Immersion, and year 4 includes a September with an industry innovation team anywhere in the US.
• Graduate certificates, 2026-27 catalog: Biomedical Ethics, Community and Population Health, and LGBTQ+ Health, plus a Graduate School certificate in Global Health and the Vanderbilt Consortium Leadership Education in Neurodevelopmental Disabilities (LEND) program, pending funding. The school's web pages list slightly different sets.

Since 2018 the MD program's classrooms, student lounge and first-year lockers have filled the second to fourth floors of the Eskind Biomedical Library and Learning Center. Light Hall, the school's home from 1977 to 2018, still hosts some MD sessions and houses CELA.

CELA combines standardized patients, technical simulation with manikins and training with donated bodies. Its Program in Human Simulation, founded in 2006, has 12 recorded exam rooms that faculty can watch through one-way mirrors or on video. The Simulation Technologies Program dates from 2005, and the Surgical and Anatomical Simulation program runs learning labs in Medical Center North.

Your college gives you faculty mentoring, advising and a peer community. An April 2026 Vanderbilt Health News article says the four colleges are named for former deans Batson, Chapman, Gabbe and Robinson, each with two faculty mentors plus faculty and senior-student affiliate advisers. College mentors lead your Learning Communities sessions, advise on wellness and careers, and do not grade you in that role.

Your portfolio coach follows a panel of about 12 students through medical school, reviewing your assessment data with you at set meetings and helping you set learning goals. Repeatedly missing coaching deadlines counts against you in the practice-based learning domain. Coaches attend promotion committee meetings but do not recommend for or against promotion.

You also have specialty advisers, peer tutoring, a second-year Big who mentors you from year 1, and a dean who manages formal advising and connects students to mental health care. Wellness retreats run every year, and a team helps with CVs, personal statements and letters for residency applications.