I was hoping to open up a question for Dr. Wood, Dr. Wood, how can we advance the field of medical presentation? What are your thoughts on that? First, I want to just thank Sky Wynn for having this topic here tonight, because I think back on the early part of my career, and no one actually formally taught me how to give presentations, I think that we all recognize that as women in cardiology, and in particular interventional cardiology, we're going to be in the minority. And sometimes we're the smaller person on the stage, or the quietest voice on the stage. So we want to be the most articulate, most informed and most effective presenter. Some of the ways I think you can do that in addition to attending things like this, at our national meetings, there are often sessions on honing your presentation skills. There are also a wonderful set of YouTube videos, and there's some great content online. And later on, I'll give you a few of my points, but I think those are some of the ways in addition to attending presentations. And when you see someone that's really an effective presenter, think about the tools that they use, the way that they presented, and how you can kind of incorporate some of those in your own repertoire of presentation skills. Thank you, Dr. Wood, those are some really good points. What about your prediction for the next five to 10 years in medical presentation? What do you think it's going to evolve into, particularly with artificial intelligence? Well, first of all, I think Dr. Zabla showed us some really phenomenal examples of taking presentation to the next level. I certainly think that we will probably end up having three-dimensional holographic kinds of images to display cardiac physiology and structure. If I were to tell you, you will all laugh, the first presentation I gave during my fellowship was actually on an overhead projector with these clear handouts that we would write them ahead of time with a marker or make a copy of the journal article on a printer. And it was very old school, and to think where we are today, it's really amazing. But I will say, don't let AI write your slides for you, don't let AI fool you. Someone told me the other day I was writing a letter of recommendation, and one of my colleagues said, oh, you can just have ChatGPT write it. And I said, nope, no way, because I want that letter to really reflect my voice. And I think the same thing comes around when we're putting a presentation together, and we heard some fabulous tips from Dr. Raj and Dr. Zabla. But you want that presentation not only to teach the audience the content that you've identified on your objectives, but you want to be able to share how that topic has been, how you've digested it, how you understand it, and how you incorporate it into your practice. There's a reason you were chosen to give the presentation that you're asked to give. And so, you know, don't dial that one in, do it yourself. I think AI might make it easier for you to download an image from the cloud of a single ventricle defect or of, you know, a bicuspid aortic valve that you could put in your presentation, but don't let AI do the work for you. I think I would agree with you, Dr. Wood, particularly to the point of being able to communicate with the audience and connect with the audience and get your message across. I think the more personal it is, the better it is going to be. So thank you for that. Dr. Raj, anything you want to add to that? Any comments? Yeah, I definitely agree. I think as regards to AI writing your talk, I think people can tell when people are genuine up on the podium and when they're not. And there's just kind of this, like you're about you and the way you speak and your comfort level when you've written your own words and you've practiced it and they're your side and et cetera. I think it's pretty obvious to tell when someone is, even like now, right? People borrow other people's slides to give talks. You can tell when the person didn't write their own talk and didn't have their own slides. So I agree. I think, especially at least for me in early career, it's such an honor when I'm asked by other people and by societies to give talks like tonight. I appreciate that, guys. But I think you want to put your best effort forward and honestly, that's how you get asked again. Thank you, Dr. Raj. And what about, what do you think is the biggest challenge in presentations currently? What do you feel is something you feel like this should not be happening on the podium and happens more often than it should be? Two things. One, I think it's really hard for people to stick to their own time. I know like some people have like a timer at the bottom and you can like, that almost like stresses you out more or like some conferences, they'll just like, if you're at the end of your time, they'll skip your last slide. So I think people need to be really cognizant about how much time you have and how much time you should dedicate to each slide and each point. And then the other thing I think is I've seen, and it's hard for me to follow when there's a lot of words on the slide because I'm trying to read the slide and I'm trying to listen to the person talking. And so I think one is just a distraction for the other. And so trying to find a way to consolidate those or for those to work together, I think would be helpful. I think I would agree with you. I've seen people do all kinds of things when people go over time, like they have timers, they have hand indications and turn off the slides as well. What about you, Dr. Jabla, what would you feel is the greatest, you know, one greatest thing you see all the time in the presentations, which is a hindrance to good communication? Yeah, I think it's critical that we keep the slides concise, but also that we know what we're talking about. And, you know, that's a very big challenge when sometimes we get assigned a topic that we're not experts on and we take it on because, you know, I'm going to do this. Being able to communicate effectively for people, for example, I'm sure that there's more than just me with an accent, we have to slow down, which obviously I still have to work on that. And bringing up, you know, a guide on your slides of where do you have to keep your communication about. Many people have like the presenter notes, which is something that most of you know, doesn't show in many of our conferences. Guide doesn't have presenter notes and so many people rely on those. And I think we all have shifted that, you know, not all use that. So, that may be used to rehearse. So, a lot when you're starting, that may be a good thing just to type what you want to say in that slide so you don't get distracted. So, I think communication is, and the key is just highlighting the key points on the slide and not really saying all that is in there. Now, with webinars and recordings is very good. We can get back to it. Absolutely. Dr. Wood, I think this would be a good one for you to highlight on as to how has your presentation skill evolved from your early career to now? And what is the biggest lesson you learned from your first experience? Well, I will say that I was really lucky because when I was in high school, I took a speech class and we had to pick a topic out of a hat and then we had to prepare a presentation and give a speech without any notes, a five-minute speech on the topic. And that was when I was like 15 or 16, I guess 16. And so, I learned then how to think on my feet, how to really understand very deeply a topic so that I didn't have to memorize the words. I would just have the flow in my head and then kind of hit on the big points. Early in my career, I was really nervous. I've heard the topic mentioned tonight, imposter syndrome. I hate to tell you, it doesn't go away. It gets a little better over time, but it doesn't go away. So early on, the thing that I struggled with was confidence. And the best way to mitigate at least imposter syndrome when you're on the podium is to practice. Even today, when I'm going to give a talk in front of like hundreds and hundreds of people or speaking in an area that I really feel like a lot of people are very much authorities on it, I will practice and I will make sure that in my head I have all those key points. I think it's critical because if you have an AV malfunction, if something happens where your slide order got mixed up, anything like that, you want to just be able to seamlessly keep on going. And for instance, I was giving a presentation last week to the development board here in our hospital system. And there were some very big donors in the audience. And they offered it hybrid, so a few people called in online. And some gentleman kept turning his microphone back on and was having a conversation with his wife. And they kept trying to mute him. And this was happening while I'm giving my presentation. And I tried to imbue some humor into it. I tried to just not lose my cool because this wasn't a really sticky topic, but it was important for me to maintain composure. So over the course of my career, I've learned to do that. I saw in the comments, in the chat, that people were talking about things like confidence and reducing fillers. That's really where practicing in front of a mirror helps so much. Learning how to not say, uh, or uh, because it's a very, very natural thing that people often do. And it's distracting to your audience. So I think learning how to minimize the fillers, learning how to pause and let the audience understand what you've just said. All of those little things are things that I've picked up over time that have significantly improved my quality of presentation from age 16 to age 61. And Dr. Wood, what was the biggest lesson you learned from your first presentation? I was trying to say the biggest lesson really I think I learned was to prepare. Just be prepared. Know the content and be prepared. Perfect. This one will probably be appropriate for Dr. Raj. What opportunities do you seek in order to continue to improve presenting? I don't know if this answered your question, but I'm going to say something that I think will help me. I think accepting any offer to present, really to anyone, I think improves your skills. Whether it's, you know, I'm at Vanderbilt, so if it's me teaching my fellows about CTOs or medical residents about angiograms or in our Women's Health Center, we do a community event every year where we talk to women in the community and encourage them to get their calcium score and things like that. Then I think that helps you also just build confidence. Because obviously you know more than the community, right? Sure, you might know more than everyone who's sitting at you with Sky, but you know more than your patients and your patient family. So I think it helps build your confidence and you get used to getting comfortable in front of the podium and sticking to the time and writing slides and things like that. But I think just accepting any opportunity, how small or how big it is, every opportunity is going to make you better. I would agree with you. What about you, Dr. Jabla? Any comments on that? Yeah, I agree with Dr. Raj, for sure. Taking all the invitations to speak, obviously some of them are more comfortable than others. But I think getting to know techniques of presenting, getting exposure to different conferences, because they all have different approaches, we'll call it, to presenting and tools and complexities. I think it's very important also to deal with questions. When you're on the podium and somebody comes and it can be not a very kind question or puts you on the spot, I think we have a better talent sometimes than our male counterparts to say, I don't know. And that should not make us feel less confident or okay with ourselves. I think it's very important to be confident in a way to accept we don't know or bring back with another question on very complex topics. And I think that's the biggest challenge. And I think that's also when it's more complicated to take an invitation to speak, because we feel maybe scared of the question that can come or the judgment or feedback that can come from the people that are there. And we have to just be okay with that, because that makes us grow. Because having bad feedback is going to be as good as having a great feedback on a presentation, and we all grow from that. So I think it's important for people that are scared to present because of that, and the confidence comes from there. We have to let go of things, just take the good of a bad experience and grow from there. So I think that's going to be very important to get over the fear of presenting. I would agree with you. Also, I think the more you watch people present, the more you watch yourself to both your points, the confidence is more likely to build. And also, as was mentioned in the presentation, that it's a dynamic process. The world's changing. Presentation skills are changing. So even if you're a good presenter today, you have to keep up and keep improving, keep looking back at yourself. It's a constant improvement that matters. I do have a few questions, a few comments that came in from the audience. And it would be nice, based upon the poll results, to maybe provide them some guidance on the limitations that they feel. So one of the questions was, what challenges do you face when creating a presentation? And some of the audience responses are that I tend to repeat a lot if it's good or bad things, to repeat things in the presentation. And I'll open it up to the panel, whoever wants to take this question. I think that's part of the practicing. If you practice and practice and practice, you will notice this repetition and things that may not need to be said so many times and clean the slides. Sometimes we repeat because we have not a clear idea of the message in our head. So we have to organize our presentation and then again, practice. I think it's harder to master the skill of presenting when time gets better. But at the beginning, practice is key. And we don't have time. I'm aware of that. We're always running between life and work. And we have a very busy schedule as interventionists. But I think we have to put that time aside. And it's critical as you plan the presentation practice to get over that part. And if it's about repeating a point during your presentation, I think if you are making a very clear point and giving it enough time the first time, you really don't have to repeat it over and over again in your presentation either. One of the other challenges that was mentioned is that I know the topic, but crafting it into a story and finding out what to say per slide is the trickiest. Any suggestions about that? I will start with that one. I think really identifying that if you were in the audience, what would be the key things that you would want to hear? And then thinking about the topic, if it's a type of procedure, what would make it interesting? Is there some nugget based on a procedure you may have done or the history of how a device was created? Do a little digging. And I'm sure you can find a story in almost anything. I think that making that connection, telling that story, it's really a way to grab your audience in. So do your homework and identify the nuances that others may not know. And you'll have a story on your hands. I think that's a great way of putting it. Sorry, go ahead. No, it's OK. I agree. I think also maybe just starting with a case or a case example or a mistake or a complication or something that kind of gives some kind of human vibe to what you're talking about, I think is helpful and also helps people relate to what you're talking about. And then just kind of what we're talking about earlier, I would try avoiding ad lib during your slides and your talk, which I think practicing and rehearsing will prevent that and help you kind of stay on topic and stay on time. Absolutely. Thank you, Dr. Raj. The other comment, which is pretty close to this one but probably a little bit different, is the most challenging is to decide what is the most important point that I should include in the slide, how to focus the conference. Any additional comments on that apart from knowing the audiences? I think I've learned to be proactive with the conferences and people that invite me for a talk to understand the objectives. If we have the objectives of the talk, you can keep yourself in track and know where to start. Mostly with topics like today, it's easy to overlap what we're saying. So having a clear objective, what you wanted from our specific presentation just allows that. And that's helped me. I don't know. Dr. Woods, do you have any other secrets? I think that's absolutely right. Just to kind of think about what are those key elements that if people, and I do say this at the end of some of my talks, I'm like, if you don't walk away from this with anything other than these key messages. And I think that that's a really good way to kind of summarize it, but people, especially at the big national meetings, they hear so many presentations and you want yours to stick out. So give them something to take home with them and as those key focus points and not remember it. Thank you, Dr. Woods. I mean, this is a good question. Difficulty distilling the knowledge down, how to make some topics exciting. Any tips about that? I want to chime in on that. You know, what I feel is like one of the things that gets, I think, gets people excited, probably statistics. If you throw numbers there and try to give them the how important that condition is, what the mortality is, or what the morbidity associated with it is, sometimes it catches a lot of attention from people. And also history. A lot of times, if you add history, that gets the topic exciting. Any other ideas around it? Well, I will say, maybe I like, oh, go ahead. Please, Dr. Naraj, please go ahead. I've spoken enough. I think this might be a good opportunity to use like some visuals, maybe like some cool Cine's or Tee images to kind of entice the audience into like something interesting or new. I think that's great. That's a great suggestion. What about you, Dr. Wood? Just going to say, one of the things is don't accept invitations to speak about things you're not passionate about. However, I would say, per Dr. Raj's wise recommendation at the beginning, as people are getting to know you, you do want to say yes, because it's a great opportunity. I'll never forget, as I was talking to Dr. Wood, I'll never forget, about five years ago, I was asked to speak at the ACC on the topic of unstable angina guidelines or something. And it was kind of a dry topic. If you really expanded it, it'd be great. I had 10 minutes. And so I did. I started with a case just because I knew that would get people going and thinking about a conundrum. And then once you kind of get excited about it, I think they get excited. The other point I'm going to weave in just on this line is the importance of connecting with your audience. Again, either looking at people in part, looking them in the eye, kind of adding some humor. If you can, if it's appropriate, being warm. That goes a long way in helping people feel your energy about a topic. And I've heard people speak that I know could get up and talk about shoe leather, and everyone would be like, oh my god, that's so interesting, because they're great speakers. So just think about what you feel about that topic and try to make it exciting with some energy. Excellent. Thank you, Dr. Woods. What about you, Dr. Jabbar? Do you want to add anything to that? So I think it depends on the setup of the conference. I've had the experience that people, when they are engaged into the discussion, for example, we're talking about a specific topic, and you know somebody in the audience, which most of the time we know people, it's like, come to the mic, what would you do for this? So people are engaged because they know, oh, they may ask me. So getting ideas and perspective from other people built into your presentation is being helpful. But again, it's not applicable for most conferences, but if it's possible, it's a nice way of keeping people awake. Well, thank you. And what if you have a diverse audience, multiple levels of training, multiple educational levels, how do you cover those topics? I think going from the basic, it's key because most times even experts forget about the basics and that's what happens to all of us after a while. So I try to keep it as simple as possible. And just, as Dr. Woods say, giving key points to take home and can be in a wide range of things, from very specific things to very basic things. And it may be boring for some people, but I think it's harder when it goes over the head of some of the people that have the least knowledge. We can talk about cool things and have really no teaching points. So I think it's a balance. And you know you're going to not make everybody happy. But if you can educate even the youngest generation, I think to me has more impact. And then you can discuss with the more experienced about things or they can come up and because they know more, they can ask you a question that can build on the specifics on the topic as well. I think that's spot on. And frankly, no matter where you are in your practice, knowing the basics and revising the basics is never a bad idea and everybody appreciates that. So thank you for that. Dr. Raj, anything you want to add to that? Yeah, I think all that's great. I would just add maybe find a teaching point for each different level of learner. Something for your medical student, let's say, but you can still find something interesting for your fellow and even like your colleagues that they probably didn't know before. But I agree, always start with the basics. And Dr. Wood just shared with everybody the five Ps of presenting, which kind of sums up the session really nicely. It's plan, prep, practice, perform, and passion. Thank you for sharing that, Dr. Wood. I do have a couple more questions if all of you have a few minutes. It's what would you like to improve in your presentation skills? And one of the things that they mentioned is about confidence, fluency, and adding interesting topics, which we have kind of covered for the most part. And then the last one is what would you like to do for the most part? but I wanted to open up to all the panelists if there are any comments they would like to add about it because that's been a recurring comment from the audiences. Maybe we'll start with Dr. Raj. I was going to say I like to be less nervous when I'm up at the podium but I think everybody probably deals with that at some point in their career. No, I think like as things that I said that I was kind of learned from fellowship and on is is imposter syndrome and I think that's like honestly throughout my career it plays a part but I think you know for the most part you have to give talks because you are an expert in the field or emerging expert in the field and like you do have knowledge and know things and have the ability to teach other people things. I think you have to appreciate that just fine-tuning those skills for your specific learner I think is important. Dr. Zhaplak? I think that this challenge to be confident and not break in front of people is trying to silence our inner critic and it's because we're just you know starting to speak and we know we're nervous, we hear the voice, then we're like you know judging ourselves and like we have to make that voice go away. We need to be like knowledgeable and acknowledge that we know what we're talking about. We're there for a reason and it's a combination of the imposter syndrome that I think it's you know we're more aware of it and as we are commenting on this it's not going to go away but I think we have to be aware that other people their perception of us sometimes is way better than our own perception so being aware that we're our worst critics it's important and then having people that you would trust that we trust to ask them how do you think we did, what can I improve and get it from there, take it from there. I think just go for it. I think we have to trust ourselves and move from there. We won't be perfect on every presentation and we have to acknowledge that as well. Thank you Dr. Jabla and Dr. Wood any final words of advice for us to take home? Yes I'll have a couple. First if you're traveling anywhere and you're giving a presentation carry two copies of your talk with you. One either on your person or in your handbag because computers break, things happen, always have that. If you're speaking at a national meeting and oftentimes you've all probably witnessed you go in and you can update the version of your talk either at ACC, ASC, Sky, whatever in the the room and sometimes it uploads sometimes it doesn't. Before you go back to the podium always look through and make sure it's the version you want because I've heard so many people run into trouble with that. The third thing really is for those of you who are still struggling with feeling confident have now with our iPads and our computers just record yourself giving the presentation. Do a dry run you know you can do a zoom and save it and then read and watch it and that is such a great way for you to give yourself feedback and for you to work on presenting skills. Again there's a ton of stuff online YouTube other resources and if you really want to take it to the next level you can actually work with a coach. I've never done that I've heard it's very very helpful and a lot of the presidents of national societies in cardiology actually are they ask them to do that because they speak on television a lot so that's another another way to take it up a notch but I certainly think practicing in front and having that recorded video and kind of looking at things that and really you know being very aware of some habits that you may want to change when you're presenting. Thank you. Thank you for those words of advice Dr. Wood. Great learning points today. I want to take a minute to thank Dr. Leah Raj. I want to thank Dr. Melissa Wood for being here and also Dr. Jenny Jabla. Again five piece to remember. I think that's the best take-home point. Plan, prep, practice, perform, and passion. Thank you for sharing those Dr. Wood and have a great evening everybody. Thank you.

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