I’ve been giving and watching medical presentations for more years than I care to count. As a medical student, a pathology resident, a fellow, and now as a professor, I think I’ve seen just about everything, good and bad.
It might seem easy to criticize presentations if you’ve never given one – but once you start doing it yourself, you’ll realize it takes a long time to get things right. I thought I’d save you a few years of struggle and write a series of posts talking about some of the mistakes I’ve seen (and made) over the years and describe how to do things in a better way.
One thing to get out of the way right at the beginning is the design of your slides. I’m assuming you’re going to use PowerPoint; there are other options out there but PowerPoint is still what most people are using so let’s talk about that.
Whether you’re presenting a case for grand rounds, or lecturing to medical students, or even just giving a short talk to your team or group, the information itself should be the thing people focus on. If the audience is getting distracted or frustrated by your slides, they won’t hear everything you’re saying, and your talk will seem less professional.
One of the first things people do when creating a PowerPoint talk is look at all the preloaded templates. If you’re going to use one of these, though, remember that simple is best. Resist the urge to pick anything with:
- A fancy or complicated design
- Weird extraneous lines, textures or patterns in the background
- Bright or loud colors
A template with any of these characteristics might look cool on your computer, but it will only be distracting and unprofessional when it’s projected on a big screen. Here are some examples of templates not to choose:
The best idea, I think, is to use your own judgement in picking the background and text colors. Screw the templates! You can make your slides way better if you start from scratch.
Since I teach pathology, I show a lot of histologic images, which are best viewed with the lights low (so you can see all the magnificent details). This means that it’s best for me to use a dark background for my text slides so the brightness is somewhat consistent from slide to slide. It would be to jarring to view a nicely stained histology photo and then be faced with a bright white background on the next slide – your pupils would be constantly adjusting.
So for my talks I like a dark (even black) background with white text for the bulk of the slide, and bright contrasting colors for the title and any subheadings. Something like this:
The background goes unnoticed, and your eye is drawn to the white text, framed by the bright (but not painfully so) green subheadings. I repeat the orange title on each slide in exactly the same place to make it consistent. We’ll talk about fonts and titles later – for now just focus on making the slide design as simple as possible.
Your situation may be different – you may be giving a talk in a relatively bright room, in which case a white background with black text (still with bright colors for the title and subheadings) would work better.
Bottom line: simplify, simplify, simplify. Simple doesn’t mean low-quality – it just means leaving out extraneous, unnecessary details so that your audience can see and hear what you’re saying.
What a great post! Medical presentation how-to’s are the kind of thing that good advice is scarce on. Thank you for covering this. I hope this becomes a mini-series!
Thanks for starting this series. I need to give my first powerpoint ever in January (about TAT on molecular testing of lung cancer specimens) and I look forward to all your recommendations and tips. Hope you’ll consider gathering the posts into one e-pub ASAP!
Sincerely,
Lee Henderson
Lafayette, IN
Thanks, Christian! I’m so glad you feel that way. I agree: nobody talks about medical presentations much. I don’t know if it’s an ego thing or what – but it seems that you just get the topic or case you’re supposed to talk about, and the date you’re supposed to talk on, and then you’re on your own. I am going to do a little series – perhaps every Monday if people seem to like it. 🙂
Thanks, Lee! I’m glad you find the topic helpful. You read my mind: I’m going to put all of them into a single, nicely-organized ebook. I don’t know if it will be out before your talk, though – so let me know if you have questions as you’re getting ready. I have given so many lectures, and you might as well learn from all of my many mistakes!
Kristine this post is gold! Would love to have you make a mini series out of this. Thank you so much.
Wow, thanks, Martin! I’m so glad you enjoyed it – thanks for letting me know. I was indeed planning to make a mini-series out of this topic – one post a week on Mondays. It’s a topic that’s not talked about too much – and the learning curve is pretty steep. Might as well share what took me a long time to figure out, so people can start off on the right foot! Hope you find it useful.
Really appreciate this post. Would love to hear more of your wisdom from years of experience on this subject – in the thick of my clinical years, will be having many presentations coming up in the near future. Thanks!
Having just attended the Indian Ocean Rim Haematology conference last month I have to agree – most medical science presenters do not know what they are doing. Death by PowerPoint was rife.
Your audience is not there to read reams of information on a slide. If they are reading, then they aren’t listening.
Don’t cut corners. If you need to produce a handout, then do so. Don’t fill your slides with dot points and then print your slides and expect people to have a clue what any of them mean 5 minutes after you finish your talk. Your slides should be visual supporting evidence for the narrative you are weaving.
Most importantly of all: you are the presenter. So present. Get out from behind the lectern. Be animated. Keep your audience’s attention, because they will fall asleep if you let them.
Yes, a mini series would be great! Thanks, Kristine
Thanks, David. Very good points! I’ve experienced similar Death by PowerPoint at the hands of experts in their fields. Perhaps it’s even more common in our field than in some others. Makes me wonder why we have so many presentations when the same material could be transmitted a different way. But an inspiring, entertaining, passionate presenter who can give you a distilled, clear view on a particularly tough topic…well, you can’t get that from a book! I hope you got something out of the conference despite the poor presentations.
Hi Raelene – so glad you like the post! Will definitely be writing more on the topic so that others don’t have to learn it all the hard way. Hopefully we’ll have lots of useful tips for your upcoming presentations!
As a dyslexic student, I just wanted to point out that picking a dark background might not be the most accessible choice out there. Many people have difficulty with high contrast, and personally I see wavy lines and have difficulty reading such presentations. Black text on an off-white yellow background is just one suggestion for keeping things easy to read. Definitely with you when it comes to simple layouts, you make some great points!
Thanks, Sophie! I didn’t know that the dark background might be an issue for dyslexic students – thank you for pointing that out. I will definitely try the black text/off-white background idea, and ask my students which they prefer. Thanks for the tip!