Presentation Topics for RadOnc Electives

[BlueSkyNY]

I have just finished my first week of my Radiation Oncology elective. The field is a lot more computational and physical exam much more significant than I had originally imagined. Its been difficult to find a good text to use as an introduction- I have been reading through baby Perez.-

If anyone has any other suggestions for books or even nice educational websites?? Please let me know...

Also, I need to pick a nice topic for my presentation coming up and I am having difficulty finding a nice topic- for which I can find lots of resources and appeals to the listeners...If anyone has any ideas for a good topic for the rad onc presentation, please please let me know- So far I have not gotten much feedback from the residents or input on topics. Please let me know where I couuld find potential topics- or any topics level appropriate.

thank you very much

---

Members don't see this ad.

 

[user_name]

I tried to post this a minute ago, but something failed.

I would recommend avoiding a talk on a specific disease site in rad onc, e.g. treatment of early stage prostate cancer. This will bore the audience as they will already know it. You may have to do this because one program made me do this so I would learn more about rad onc.

I would advocate discussing a topic that arises during the rotation regarding a specific patient or disease. This will give you a case report or anecdote to open the talk smoothly. A particularly good topic is one that arises while talking with a senior attending who also does not know the answer or literature. This will give you a chance to grab the attendings' attention, teach him and the rest of the audience something new, and will demonstrate your intellectual curiosity and drive to answer your own questions. (This method also saves you from the pimp session that follows the above method, as nobody will know more about your topic than you!)

I would discourage giving a "canned" talk from Med Student Research Day, particularly if it has no relation to rad onc. This will make you look too lazy or too bored with rad onc to learn something new. The exception to this is if you are on an away "interview" rotation and you want a chance to present your work on a long-term cancer related project in an hour long format. You most likely will not get this opportunity during your interview day.

Good Luck!

 

[BlueSkyNY]

thanks for replying..the problem is that so far nothing mind blowing has caught my attention- and im worried i wont have enought time to wait until i get an exciting case with controversy.....also my residents are not being very helpful and they told me they dont have very much time to teach on the first day of my rotation...if there are any specific topics that you know are of interest, kindly share

I tried to post this a minute ago, but something failed.

I would recommend avoiding a talk on a specific disease site in rad onc, e.g. treatment of early stage prostate cancer. This will bore the audience as they will already know it. You may have to do this because one program made me do this so I would learn more about rad onc.

I would advocate discussing a topic that arises during the rotation regarding a specific patient or disease. This will give you a case report or anecdote to open the talk smoothly. A particularly good topic is one that arises while talking with a senior attending who also does not know the answer or literature. This will give you a chance to grab the attendings' attention, teach him and the rest of the audience something new, and will demonstrate your intellectual curiosity and drive to answer your own questions. (This method also saves you from the pimp session that follows the above method, as nobody will know more about your topic than you!)

I would discourage giving a "canned" talk from Med Student Research Day, particularly if it has no relation to rad onc. This will make you look too lazy or too bored with rad onc to learn something new. The exception to this is if you are on an away "interview" rotation and you want a chance to present your work on a long-term cancer related project in an hour long format. You most likely will not get this opportunity during your interview day.

Good Luck!

 

[COhiker]

Let me add an opinion.
1. Choose something which you actually find interesting: you're going to be spending some time reading and thinking about this so you may as well make it enjoyable.

2. Choose something not everyone is going to already know. In fact, if you can be the most knowledgeable person on the topic, that would be ideal. Pragmatically, you get fewer hard questions this way. For example if your home institutions uses a particular modality which others don't tend to use, talk about that!

3. Once you have a topic, choose one or two papers to talk about in depth. This is not the time to show your ability to read 70 papers and make 70 powerpoint slides. Rather, know your papers and their context in detail and then limit your slides to one every 1-2 minutes. My feeling is that you'll be a bigger star for knowing a small amount of info well as opposed to a lot of info poorly.

4. Tell a story. I don't mean tell a story about washing your car, rather, make your presentation into a story. If you are talking about chemorads for locally advanced NSCLC, tell how this was treated historically, how it is treated now and what lead us from point a to point b. Use the two papers which told us to use chemorads as your focus. If you have more time, talk about the future of combining rads with molecularly targeted therapies.

Others may disagree or add but I think these points capture much of the advice I have been given about presentations over the years.

As above, good luck.