TIME TO ENGAGE YOUR MEDICAL AUDIENCE

Over the last couple of years I have become increasingly bored and tired on how medical conferences are presented in Academic Institutions. It does not matter if it is; Morbidity and Mortality, Journal Club, Morning Report, State of the Art conference. It is always the same format. The content of the material may be great but digesting it is difficult.

It is like trying to give someone a boiled chicken thigh with no salt or spices. If you are vegetarian it would equal an uncooked piece of Tempeh.  They are both good for you but good luck swallowing more than 3 pieces.

Same thing goes for these conferences. With all the tools out there, it is a true shame that we continue presenting our medical knowledge to students, residents and fellows in the same, insipid didactic forms.

OK… So what do you recommend?

            I previously wrote an article about yammer and how I am using it in the Cardiology department to stimulate learning between cardiology fellows and faculty. Well now I have opened the doors to internal medicine residents and they are learning with us.  In a future I would not be surprised if the whole institution is part of such network. Each subspecialty having its own groups. Each group sharing knowledge, asking questions, solving problems that any given team is just stuck upon.  I will make another post in a near future on how this is working on. (I can only expect it to get better after being purchased by Microsoft for 1.2billion dollars… but in any case)

I recently had talk on a Journal Club about a particular article.   One little problem… I wanted to incorporate social media in my talk to make it more interesting, more interactive.  I wanted to make it “fun”. This is how I did it.

I wanted to incorporate Twitter into my Powerpoint presentation. I did some websearch aka  (googled it) and I stumbled upon SAP WEB 2.0, blog created by Timo Elliott. Here he presents some templates he created in which you can incorporate Twitter into you presentation.  There is no wrong or right answer on how to use it, just use your imagination, ask yourself “What could make my presentation more interesting”.  This is what my powerpoint presentation looks like

1) THIS IS THE FIRST SLIDE. THE 2 ICONS YOU SEE IN THE UPPER RIGHT CORNER WILL BE PRESENT THROUGHOUT THE PRESENTATION AND TAKE ME TO THE CORRESPONDING SLIDE SHOWN BELOW (2,3). IN ADDITION I ALSO HAVE A LIVE STREAM IN ALL OF MY SLIDES THAT CAN BE TURNED ON AND OFF DURING MY PRESENTATION.  AUDIENCE MEMBERS CAN SHARE THEIR THOUGHTS AT THE SAME TIME I AM TALKING.  SOME MIGHT FIND IT DISTRACTING, I FIND IT AMAZING AND ENGAGING.

2) AT ANY GIVEN TIME I CAN CLICK THE TWITTER ICON ON THE UPPER RIGHT CORNER OF MY PRESENTATION AND WILL TAKE ME TO THE SLIDE THAT SHOWS THE TWEETS OF THE HASHTAG IM USING DURING MY CONFERENCE. IN MY CASE,  I AM A CARDIOLOGIST AND GIVING A CARDIOLOGY JOURNAL CLUB, I NAMED IT CARDIOTWEETS

3)  IN THIS SLIDE I CAN TYPE A QUESTION LIVE IN THE PRESENTATION WITH THE OBJECT BOX I CREATED. IN ADDITION I CAN ALSO CREATE ANSWERS. THE AUDIENCE LATER TWEETS THEIR VOTE AND GET THEM IN A BAR GRAPH OR PIE CHART

HOPE YOU LIKE IT AND FIND IT  USEFUL  SPECIAL THANKS TO TIMO ELLIOT FOR CREATING SUCH A MASTERPIECE AND SHARING IT.

HAVE A QUESTION? EMAIL ME AT:   CHASSADK AT GMAIL.COM