Creighton University Phoenix Student Defense Lawyer
Creighton’s Phoenix health sciences campus concentrates several professional programs in one building, and the matters that bring those students to me are correspondingly varied: a medical student facing a promotion committee after a failed clerkship, a physician assistant student removed from a clinical site, an accelerated nursing student told a course failure ends the program, a pharmacy or therapy student whose professionalism has been documented in a way that will follow them to licensure. What the cases share is compressed timing. Health-professions programs run in tight cohorts, and a student who loses a term does not simply repeat a class — they wait for the next cohort, if there is a seat.
Overview
Creighton University is a private Jesuit institution, and its Health Sciences Campus in Phoenix opened in 2021 at Park Central in midtown Phoenix, at 3100 North Central Avenue. The campus houses the School of Medicine in Phoenix, which offers the MD and physician assistant programs; the College of Nursing in Phoenix, which offers an accelerated BSN; and the School of Pharmacy and Health Professions in Phoenix, which offers the doctor of physical therapy, doctor of occupational therapy, and doctor of pharmacy programs. Roughly a thousand learners train there.
Private status controls the legal theory. Creighton is not a state actor, so no Fourteenth Amendment claim is available. Goss v. Lopez, 419 U.S. 565 (1975), applies at public institutions, and the cases describing academic deference, Board of Curators of the University of Missouri v. Horowitz, 435 U.S. 78 (1978), and Regents of the University of Michigan v. Ewing, 474 U.S. 214 (1985), describe how narrow judicial review of academic judgment is even where the Constitution does apply. At Creighton the operative documents are the university handbook, the school or college handbook, the program’s progression and technical standards, and the clinical evaluation policy, and those documents are the contract. See breach of contract against universities.
Federal statutes apply regardless of private status. FERPA governs your education records, Title IX governs sexual-misconduct proceedings, and Section 504 and the ADA govern accommodations, including the accommodations that clinical placements are obligated to consider. See disability accommodations under Section 504 and the ADA.
Where Creighton Phoenix cases come from
The recurring sources are course and clerkship failures with remediation attached; clinical and rotation problems, which are the single most common trigger across the PA, nursing, PT, OT, and pharmacy programs on this campus; professionalism concerns, which are subjective, cumulative, and reach further than any single grade; and accommodation failures that only become visible after a student has already failed something. Those are addressed on my clinical rotation and externship failures, medical school dismissal and remediation, nursing school dismissal, and professionalism and fitness concerns pages.
A structural feature of a branch health sciences campus is worth naming. The program you are in may be administered from the university’s home campus, the committee considering your matter may sit elsewhere, and the handbook you were issued may describe offices, officials, or resources that exist at another site. That is not a defect by itself, but where the process you actually received differs from the process the document describes, the difference belongs in your written response.
Which process you are in matters
These programs run academic progression, professionalism review, and student conduct as separate systems, with separate decision-makers and separate appeal rights, and clinical performance problems can be routed into any of the three depending on how the program characterizes them. A rotation failure treated as an academic matter gets deference; the same facts treated as professionalism generate a durable record; the same facts treated as conduct trigger a different procedure entirely. Ask in writing which policy governs your matter.
Identify the track before responding: academic dismissal and suspension, student conduct, or Title IX. Where a decision is disciplinary in substance but delivered under an academic label, that mismatch is worth raising at the first opportunity.
What to do first
Pull the current program handbook, the progression and promotion policy, the technical standards, and the clinical evaluation criteria from the university’s own site rather than relying on any summary, including this one. In a contract analysis the governing version is the one in effect for your cohort, and these documents are reissued each year. Save what governs your case now.
Then calendar the deadline in writing, request your file — evaluations, committee materials, professionalism reports, site correspondence — and preserve messages with preceptors and coordinators, scheduling records, and accommodation communications. Do not sit for a committee meeting or provide a written account before you understand what the program claims to have. Students consistently treat the first meeting as a chance to explain. It is the record on which the decision will be built.
What I can help with
- Reading the governing policy against the charge or decision letter
- Helping you prepare your account, your documents, and your questions
- Testing whether the school followed its own published procedures
- Scrutinizing software-based evidence, including AI-detection and similarity reports
- Assisting with the written response and appeal, to the extent the policy permits
- Serving as your advisor where the process allows it
- Negotiating sanction terms, notations, and disclosure language
What a lawyer may actually do in your case depends on that school’s policy. Some tracks allow counsel to participate, some allow a non-participating advisor, and some allow no outside person at all. Reading the current policy is the first step, and it determines what form the assistance can take.
Common questions
A clinical site asked that I not return. Is that a dismissal?
Not by itself. A site is not the school and does not run the school’s process, but a site’s decision can end a placement and trigger a progression consequence quickly. The controlling question is what the program’s own policy requires once a placement ends — notice, a chance to respond, a replacement placement, remediation, or committee review — and whether the program did those things. That is the argument, rather than whether the site’s judgment was fair.
Will a professionalism note affect my licensure?
It can, and the mechanism is disclosure. Licensing boards, credentialing bodies, residency and fellowship programs, and employers ask about adverse findings, dismissals, and withdrawals taken under pressure, and what they read is the exact language of the resolution and any transcript notation, not your account of what happened. That language is negotiable far more often than students assume, which is why negotiating it is sometimes the most valuable work in the case.
I am in the accelerated nursing program and failed one course. Is that really the end?
It depends on the progression policy, and accelerated cohorts are unforgiving by design because the sequence is compressed and the seats are counted. Read what the policy says about a first failure, about repeating, about readmission, and about the deadline for requesting any of those. The most common avoidable loss in these programs is a student who spends the appeal window deciding whether to appeal.
Related Arizona pages: University of Arizona College of Medicine in Phoenix, A.T. Still University in Mesa, and Midwestern University in Glendale. The full list is on the Arizona student defense index, and a flat-fee record review is described on the fees and scope of services page.
This is general information about the matters I handle and the law that applies to them. It is not legal advice about your situation, and the law in this area can change. For advice on your matter, start with the Full Read + Game Plan — your entire file read, straight answers, and exactly what to do next, in what order.
This page is informational and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by the institution named on it.
Attorney advertising. Zachary Gaynor is admitted in Florida and its federal courts, not in Arizona; Arizona matters are handled through the framework described on the nationwide practice page — federal-law assessment, campus-process support where the school’s policy permits an advisor, and association with local counsel or pro hac vice admission where required.