In my first year of residency, Dr. D., one of our attendings encouraged residents to submit our powerpoint presentations for him to review. I took his offer and will be forever grateful to him. He helped me polish my powerpoints. My program director told another attending, in private, that a presentation I made was the best she had ever heard from a resident in her entire career. That was a huge compliment from someone who doesn’t talk much. What I share below is some of Dr. D’s advice that helped make my presentations commendable.
To create a great powerpoint presentation, I recommend the following.
- Start preparing your topic very early. More than 4 weeks in advance if you can.
- Interview 3 or more specialists in the area of your talk to see how they practice compared to what you find in research.
- Ask one of the specialists to review your powerpoints when you are done. E.g., when I spoke on Anticoagulants, I had a cardiologist review my slides.
- Ask one of your own specialty physicians to review after the specialist. E.g. if you are a family medicine resident, have a family medicine attending review your slides and give you feedback. That’s the role Dr. D did for me.
- Convert a lot of text into pictures. Pictures are great.
- Make it interactive. Instead of just providing information, put a slide before that ask’s your audience a question, and then follow that with the information that answers that question. Put a lot of that in there. It will make it interactive and cause your audience to think.
- Objectives / Learning Outcome slide. Instead of using a summary slide, use an Objectives or Learning Outcome slide. This says what your objectives are with the talk or what students are expected to be able to do after the talk.
- Take home slide. Put a take home at the beginning and end of your talk. It should list only three things or less (no more than that) that you want your audience to take home.