Vincent Rajkumar, Professor of Medicine at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, shared on X:
“Being able to deliver a great talk/presentation is really important for academic success. Especially in medicine.
1) Know your audience: If it’s clinicians, keep your talk relevant. You don’t need to impress them with all that you know about complex mechanism of action pathways, unavailable genomic tests, and a lot of phase I investigational stuff.
2) Razor focus on the title of the talk: Easy concept but one is see even experts miss. If the talk is on how you treat, tell them how you treat. Don’t spend half the time on pathogenesis or the latest research in your lab.
3) Keep slides simple: I often see entire posters on a single slide. It’s better to show one summary figure or a simple table and keep the audience engaged with your voice and explanation
4) Clarity: An essential ingredient. speak into the mic. Be crystal clear; Build up the story so even someone not in your field will be able to follow along.
5) Know your subject extremely well: The most important of all. You cannot do 1-4 without this. Being complex is easy. Simple is hard. Simple comes only with a really strong command of the subject and the data.
Plan your opening and ending. Rest has to be conversational and not reading off the slides. Takes time and practice.
Chime in if you have other thoughts or ideas.”
Other posts featuring Vincent Rajkumar on OncoDaily.