TRAINING and EDUCATION
How I Teach
“How I Teach” is ASH Clinical News’ forum for sharing best practices
in teaching hematology to medical students, residents, and fellows.
We invite essays providing insight into teaching and modeling
clinical practice (history-taking, the physical exam, informed
consent, giving bad news), successful research mentoring, diseasespecific tips, or more general advice.
This month, Morie A. Gertz, MD, discusses the do’s and don’ts of
presenting medical research.
THE DO’S AND DON’TS OF
RESEARCH PRESENTATIONS
By Morie A. Gertz, MD
here’s a basic formula for
presentations of any kind:
“Tell them what you are going
to tell them; then tell them; and
then tell them what you told them.”
Of course, if you have ever sat
through a 10-minute presentation with 50
slides covering every bit of data in the known
world – or, if you’ve looked out from the
podium and been able to count the number of
dozing audience members – you know there
are more nuances than that.
Here are 10 tips for giving a successful
presentation that I share with younger
hematologists and fellows new to the process
– and the more senior researchers who
might need a refresher course – learned from
years of sitting in the audience of less-thansuccessful talks, as well as making my own
mistakes as the brave soul up on the podium.
highly likely that your humor won’t translate
to a multicultural or international audience
– and you also run the risk of alienating
or insulting someone. If you want to inject
humor into your presentation, stick to selfdeprecatory jokes poking fun at yourself.
Basically, though, you are given this time
to deliver content, so deliver your content
as best you can. Humor may make your
presentation a little bit more memorable, but
it’s not something I recommend unless you
understand the audience very well.
#3
Don’t fall in love with your data.
Many individuals feel that they have
to address every single piece of evidence in
existence to educate the audience on the topic
being discussed. That’s a great danger because,
often, the presentation turns into a recitation
of minutiae.
Don’t over-complicate things.
Follow the “KISS” principle: Keep
It Simple, Scientist. Experts tend to become
so familiar with their data that they may
overestimate what their audience really
understands. When that’s the case, talks can
get very complex very quickly. Also, there is
often a very broad range of knowledge among
the audience members, so as a presenter,
you are tasked with making a complex topic
comprehensible to a wide variety of learners.
That’s not to say that you should dumb down
your presentation, but try to find the balance
between over-simplifying and making higherlevel information understandable.
#2
#4
#1
Know your audience.
Every audience is different – if you
try to give the same talk to medical students
and practicing physicians and your colleagues,
you’re making a grave mistake. Tailor your
talk to your audience, their comprehension,
and their training level.
In a similar vein, an academic presentation
is not the time to test out some new jokes.
Jokes tend to point out cultural ironies, so it’s
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Narrow your focus to key data.
Most presentations tend to be
too dense with respect to the data being
presented: a speaker will work through the
Kaplan-Meier survival curves, response rates,
stringent response rates, and progressionfree survival of 30 clinical trials. It all runs
together. Similar to point #1, you need to
focus on the key points that are representative
of other published data.
“Every audience
is different – if
you try to give
the same talk to
medical students
and practicing
physicians, you’re
making a grave
mistake.”
#5
Don’t forget to provide a learning
objective.
All talks should – and those that qualify for
CME credit are required to – have learning
objectives. Of course, if you do provide a
learning objective, it should go without saying
that you need to follow through with it. Many
times, presenters will say, “Here’s the purpose
of my talk,” but then they seem to forget about
it as they progress through their talk. In other
words, I view the learning objectives as the
strategic plan for the presentation; it’s another
way of saying, “Here is what we are trying to
achieve with this talk.”
For instance, if you begin your talk by
stating the objective of, “The learner will
understand the newest therapies in myeloma,”
then don’t spend half of your talk discussing
the biology of the disease unless it relates
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