Dynamic presentation skills are more important now than ever before for medical professionals. Effective and modern presentation skills are absolutely necessary, and having such skills can make a big difference in your professional effectiveness. Many medical professionals have teaching as a major aspect of their job. Increasingly, clinicians are required to construct presentations that facilitate real learning and not just a way to deliver loads of data and information. Delivering presentations with passion and enthusiasm will facilitate more effective learning and by extension may even impact patient care and outcomes.
Bullet-point filled slides with lots of text and small, poorly designed visuals become a barrier to good communication. We have become accustomed to visually busy and hard to see slides which cause a disconnect between the audience and the presenter. Many medical professionals are fed up with dense, hard to comprehend text-filled slides and presenters who just read a script and deliver a dull presentation. A presentation is a great opportunity for teaching and helping people to understand your findings and ideas so that they may make a change for the better. Presenters often unintentionally deliver their ideas in a way that is confusing for the audience. However, the presenter should ask themselves: How can I take this complicated topic and make it easy for the audience to understand and remember? Achieving this goal take creativity and an empathy for the audience.
I have been interested in multimedia and presentation since I was a child, and this interest is largely why I went to work for Apple in Silicon Valley. At Apple I was inspired by Steve Jobs presentation skills and became convinced that all professionals could become much better presenters by studying the arts of storytelling and visual communication.
The Presentation Zen approach challenges the conventional wisdom of making slide presentations today and encourages medical professionals to think differently and more creatively about the preparation, design, and delivery of presentations. Based on research from the cognitive sciences, combined with principles from the world of the Zen arts, graphic design and visual communications, Presentation Zen will dispel popular myths about what is an effective presentation and offer up effective alternatives and approaches for designing and delivering better presentations. All throughout the presentation, the common themes are (1) restraint and clarity in preparation, (2) simplicity in design, and (3) naturalness in delivery.
