Joanna Coghill, Rachel Gaywood, Sarah Christie, and Gavin Perkins give some crucial advice on how to present your research

Attending an international medical conference can be a challenging but rewarding experience for a medical student. There are certain things to think about when going to a conference. This article covers some of the basics about attending a conference. Some of the advice may seem obvious, but if you're not organised and don't plan far enough ahead then you could run into difficulty.

Selecting a conference and submitting the abstract

Have you done research that has shown something new, or brought a new way of thinking about an old problem? If so, would you like to share your findings with the wider medical community? If the answer to both of these questions is yes then you may like to consider submitting your work for presentation at a conference.

One of the first things to establish is if your work is appropriate for submission to a conference. You should ideally discuss the idea with your project or research supervisor. Alternatively the head of the department or a friendly consultant or registrar may be able to provide some advice.

If your work is appropriate then the first step towards getting your work accepted for presentation is to prepare an abstract. Abstracts are a short (usually 200-300 words) summary of your research. Conferences usually invite the submission of abstracts three to nine months in advance. Instructions on how to submit an abstract are usually available on the conference website or from the conference organisers. Follow these instructions closely, as failure to do so is a common reason for abstracts being turned down. You can often express a preference for the presentation format (oral or poster presentation), although there is often no guarantee that you will get your chosen format.

If you plan to submit your abstract by post, allow plenty of time, especially if sending it abroad. Many conferences fortunately now allow electronic submission of abstracts. Again, submit in plenty of time, as it is not unheard of for the abstracts submission systems to crash as hundreds of people rush to send in their abstracts at the final hour!

It is good practice to ensure that all contributors to your work are included on the abstract. Details on the criteria that define "authorship" can be found on bmj.com. Most national and international meetings insist that the work has not been presented or published previously. Local or regional meetings are not generally included in this rule.

Conference registration

After submission, your abstract will usually be reviewed by a panel of experts, who will decide if it will be accepted for presentation. If your abstract is accepted then you will need to register for the conference. Details on how to register are usually provided with the confirmation letter that your abstract has been accepted. Alternatively the conference website will have this information. There are often discounts available for students and for registering early. While it is often possible to register at the conference, this is usually more expensive and invariably involves a lot of queuing.

Medical conferences

Pros

• Excellent learning opportunity
• Fascinating chance to travel
• Great achievement to put on your curriculum vitae

• Expensive
• Need to take time out of medical studies
• Time involved in preparing work and sorting out travel and accommodation

After you have registered you should receive a confirmation letter and programme in the weeks leading up to the conference. If you do not hear anything then contact the organisers as errors can occur because of the vast numbers of delegates registering.

Organising travel and accommodation

Budget travel and accommodation provide affordable options. Good, cheap accommodation gets booked up early owing to the large number of people staying in the city at the time of the conference, so book early to snap up the best deals. Some conferences recommend places to stay, although these may be expensive. For flights consider budget as well as scheduled airlines. The conference organisers sometimes arrange discounted flights--but check that they are actually the cheapest before booking.

If you need a visa to visit the country where the conference is being held then apply in plenty of time. The organisers can issue a letter of invitation to delegates if required to facilitate their application for a visa.

Funding

Attending meetings can be an expensive ordeal for delegates but particularly for medical students who are usually already in debt. It is worth applying to charities and organisations for financial support to help fund your trip. Your university may have grants for students to attend conferences. Many organisations only meet a couple of times a year to discuss grant applications so apply early if you can.

The conference

Conferences vary in duration from a few days to a week. Most run a series of plenary or main sessions with simultaneous satellite sessions. Reading the programme in advance will allow you to go to the things you are most interested in, as it is usually not possible to attend everything. You might need to pre-register for certain sessions. The poster and oral abstract presentations usually run alongside the plenary and satellite sessions.

Preparing a poster presentation

The organisers will inform you about the size that your poster should be--ours had to be 100 cm * 70 cm. Posters can be prepared using MS Word or PowerPoint and scaled according to the required dimensions. The university or your local hospital medical illustration department may be able to help with the production of the poster. Producing a large laminated poster can be expensive (up to £150), so make sure that you find out in advance who is paying. A cheaper alternative is a series of A4 sheets amalgamated together.

When preparing the poster it is best to keep the format simple. Use large, legible fonts that can be read from a distance and make good use of colour, graphs, and tables. Posters need to include the title of your research, who you are, and where you did the work (the university or hospital address). The structure of the poster should follow in broad terms: background, aims, methods, results, and discussion. You also need to acknowledge any financial support you had for doing the research. Posters need to be attractive and easy to read from a distance to encourage people to read them. Bullet points rather than paragraphs of text are often easier to read. After you have done all this work, take the poster with you on the plane as hand luggage. This isn't the piece of baggage you want the airline to lose.

It is worth bringing drawing pins or sticky tape with you as the facilities for attaching posters to the boards provided by the conference can often be inadequate or impossible to find. Some people also find bringing A4 summary sheets of the poster contents to hand out to interested delegates useful.

Poster sessions are usually grouped according to the content of the research. Authors need to be present by their poster during the allocated poster viewing time. During this time the conference organisers will review the posters and ask questions about their content. Be prepared to give a two to three minute verbal summary of your poster during this time. At some conferences more formal discussions of posters take place which require the preparation of an overhead projector transparency. You should receive this information in advance when the organisers confirm your abstract has been accepted for presentation. These sessions are excellent learning opportunities and a good chance for you to present and receive feedback on your work. There is also usually a prize for the best poster and oral presentations.

Preparing an oral presentation

If your abstract has been accepted as an oral presentation you will normally be asked to prepare a 10-15 minute talk. Most conferences are strict about timekeeping because of the large number of presentations that need to be done in each session, so practise keeping your talk to time.

Most presentations are delivered using PowerPoint or 35 mm slides, and it is vital to check beforehand which format you need to prepare. If using PowerPoint bring several copies of your presentation on disk and ensure you have checked that the conference offers the same version of PowerPoint you have used. Slides should, as with posters, be clear and concise. Avoid putting too many words on a slide and make good use of graphs whenever possible. Follow the conventional format of a title slide (abstract title, author, and institution details), background, aims, methods, results, discussion. As a general guide, prepare one slide for each minute you have to talk. When delivering the presentation remember to speak loudly and clearly, maintaining good eye contact with the audience. Most scientific meetings are conducted in English.

In early October, while our colleagues were revising for final exams in Birmingham, we were soaking up the ambience of Florence, one of Italy's most beautiful cities. This was not simply a holiday to escape the stresses of revision but an amazing opportunity to present our own research at the European Resuscitation Council's Sixth Scientific Congress. We never envisaged that the research we conducted as part of our public health and epidemiology project in the third year would be presented at an international conference.

Our study looked at deterioration in basic life support knowledge among healthcare students, an idea that stemmed from personal involvement in the undergraduate resuscitation course run at Birmingham medical school. When we discussed our plans with the clinicians who run the basic life support course at the university they suggested that we submitted our research to the European Resuscitation Council Congress, which was being held in Florence in October 2002. Although this meant the additional work of preparing an abstract we were very excited by the prospect of presenting our work in Italy.

Presenting our research was an amazing educational experience. It was an excellent opportunity to learn and receive constructive feedback on our work. If you have some research that you are thinking of submitting to present at an international conference try and prepare things as early as possible to ensure everything runs smoothly. We are now in the process of submitting our work for publication and thinking of further research that might take us to another international conference soon.