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We were unable to process your request. Please try again later. If you continue to have this issue please contact customerservice@slackinc.com. Back to Healio Key takeaways: Mentorship and peer support are invaluable when presenting at live conferences. Preparation is essential for overcoming fears at the podium. Take a look at the Healio | OSN calendar page, and you will find more than three dozen meetings, symposia and summits that make up a year of ophthalmology gatherings. Whether they are one-room, single-day conferences, such as Clinical Trials at the Summit, or they take up full convention centers, such as the American Academy of Ophthalmology annual meeting, they all give physicians a chance to stand in front of their peers to present research, discuss hot topics and celebrate their profession.
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Courtesy of Nandini Venkateswaran, MD
Speaking at these conferences is a shared experience for many ophthalmologists. Nandini Venkateswaran, MD, was a first-year ophthalmology resident when she gave her first two presentations at a national conference at the 2017 American Society of Cataract and Refractive Surgery annual meeting in Los Angeles. \u201cThese were my first opportunities to present research that I had done with mentors, one from my residency program and one from outside my residency program,\u201d she said. \u201cIt was just a special opportunity to have visibility at those paper sessions as a trainee in front of doctors who I looked up to and are leaders in the field.\u201d Venkateswaran said a physician who moderated one of those sessions, Liliana Werner, MD, PhD, still brings up that paper session every time they see each other. \u201cI was presenting a paper about the impact of IOL glistenings on vision quality that I had prepared with Dr. Kenneth Rosenthal, and I was all nerves to be presenting as a first-time resident about a topic that I did not feel I was an expert in,\u201d she said. \u201cBut I ensured I knew all the details of my presentation, was prepared to answer any potential questions and ran through my talk several times. To this day, Dr. Werner will come up to me and say, \u2018I remember when you were a first-year resident presenting that great paper on IOL glistenings and now look how far you have come!\u2019 We always connect about that memory when we see each other at various meetings. It\u2019s so memorable to me to have had that opportunity to present at the ASCRS meeting back then as a first-year resident, and now ASCRS has grown into one of my favorite and most important meetings to present at annually.\u201d Start Small If young physicians want to present at a conference, they can start with research that is easily available to them, said Healio | OSN Associate Medical Editor William B. Trattler, MD. \u201cWhat keyed my early success was just doing clinical research in my own practice that led to data that I could present at meetings,\u201d he said. \u201cLook at your outcomes from cataract surgery or refractive surgery.\u201d William B. Trattler Trattler said starting out as a speaker can be as easy as presenting a complication and management. His first presentation was related to his practice outcomes for PRK in patients with a history of LASIK. Previous research had recommended against PRK after LASIK due to potential for corneal haze. Using data from his own practice, as well as outcomes reported by colleagues, Trattler came to a different conclusion. \u201cI looked at my own results but then also reached out to other doctors and made a spreadsheet with all the results,\u201d he said. \u201cI was able to present that at various meetings, showing that it was safe to perform PRK over LASIK with the use of mitomycin C and other advances at the time.\u201d Overcoming nerves Healio\/OSN Board Member Laura M. Periman, MD, started presenting before she was even in medical school. When she was an undergraduate, she presented her summer research on proopiomelanocortin expression in primate hypothalami at the Oregon National Primate Research Center. Laura M. Periman \u201cThat ended up forming the basis for my expert knowledge on medications like melanocortins that we use in medicine,\u201d she said. \u201cNo matter how esoteric something may seem from a basic science perspective, there are clinical applications. You can build on that knowledge base, share it with your colleagues and say, \u2018This is how I\u2019ve come to understand it.\u2019\u201d Periman said she did a lot of preparation before her first presentation, but she was still \u201cterrified.\u201d \u201cI still get nervous, especially in front of big venues, but it gets better with time,\u201d she said. For people who might struggle with that fear factor, Periman said there are ways to work on the issue. She recommended working on projects with passion behind them and submitting them as much as possible for practice. \u201cThe opportunity to present your work many times is powerful,\u201d she said. \u201cYou don\u2019t necessarily have to become a clinician scientist, but it\u2019s good practice and skill building. Every time you do it, you\u2019ve built more skills, more experience, more knowledge and more know-how.\u201d Periman suggested starting at smaller conferences, whether that means a regional meeting or a niche national meeting such as Women in Ophthalmology. \u201cSomething less intense than ASCRS or AAO can help you get your feet wet,\u201d she said. \u201cI think it\u2019s a great strategy to get started.\u201d Periman said some people never actually overcome their fears; they just learn strategies to manage them. Practice is a good place to start. \u201cIt feels so silly to practice in front of a mirror, but it\u2019s priceless,\u201d she said. \u201cJust run it again and again and again with your timer until you\u2019ve got it down to the<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3540,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3539","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/drsoniafawad.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3539","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/drsoniafawad.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/drsoniafawad.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/drsoniafawad.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/drsoniafawad.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3539"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/drsoniafawad.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3539\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/drsoniafawad.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/3540"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/drsoniafawad.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3539"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/drsoniafawad.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3539"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/drsoniafawad.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3539"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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