journal presentation topics

Journal Club: How to Prepare Effectively and Smash Your Presentation

Journal club. It’s so much more than orally dictating a paper to your peers.

It’s an opportunity to get a bunch of intelligent people in one place to share ideas. It’s a means to expand the scientific vocabulary of you and the audience. It’s a way to stimulate inventive research design.

But there are so many ways it can go wrong.

Poorly explained papers dictated blandly to an unengaged audience. Confusing heaps of data shoehorned into long presentations. Everybody stood awkwardly outside a meeting room you thought would be free.

Whether you are unsure what journal club is, are thinking of starting one, or simply want to up your presentation game—you’ve landed on the ultimate journal club guide.

The whats, the whys, and the hows, all in one place.

What Is a Journal Club in Science?

A journal club is a series of meetings in which somebody is elected to present a research paper, its methods, and findings to a group of colleagues.

The broad goal is to stimulate discussion and ideas that the attendees may apply to their own work. Alternatively, someone may choose a paper because it’s particularly impactful or ingenious.

Usually, the presenter alternates per a rota, and attendance may be optional or compulsory.

The presenter is expected to choose, analyze, and present the paper to the attendees with accompanying slides.

The presentation is then followed by a discussion of the paper by the attendees. This is usually in the form of a series of questions and answers directed toward the presenter. Ergo , the presenter is expected to know and understand the paper and subject area to a moderate extent.

Why Have a Journal Club?

I get it. You’re a busy person. There’s a difficult research problem standing between you and your next tenure.

Why bother spending the time and energy participating in a series of meetings that don’t get you closer to achieving your scientific goals?

The answer: journal club does get you closer to achieving your scientific goals!

But it does this in indirect ways that subtly make you a better scientist. For example:

• It probably takes you out of your comfort zone.
• It makes you a better communicator.
• It makes you better at analyzing data.
• It improves your ability to critique research.
• It makes you survey relevant literature.
• It exposes you and your audience to new concepts.
• It exposes your audience to relevant literature.
• It improves the reading habits of you and your audience.
• It gets clever people talking to each other.
• It gives people a break from practical science.

It also provides a platform for people to share ideas based on their collective scientific experience. And every participant has a unique set of skills. So every participant has the potential to provide valuable insight.

This is what a good journal club should illicit.

Think of journal club as reading a book. It’s going to enrich you and add beneficially to the sum of your mental furniture, but you won’t know how until you’ve read it.

Need empirical evidence to convince you? Okay!

In 1988 a group of medical interns was split into two groups. One received journal club teaching and the other received a series of seminars. Approximately 86% of the journal club group reported improved reading habits. This compares to 0% in the group who received seminar-based teaching. [1]

Journal Club Template Structure

So now you know what journal club is, you might wonder, “how is it organized and structured?”

That’s what the rest of this article delves into. If you’re in a rush and need to head back to the lab, here’s a graphical summary (Figure 1).

Nobody likes meetings that flounder around and run over time. And while I have no data to prove it, I reckon people take less away from such meetings. Here’s a basic journal club template that assumes you are the presenter.

Introduce the Paper, Topic, Journal, and Authors

Let your audience know what you will be talking about before diving right in. Remember that repetition (of the important bits) can be a good thing.

Introducing the journal in which the paper is published will give your audience a rough idea of the prestige of the work.

And introducing the authors and their respective institutes gives your audience the option of stowing this information away and following it up with further reading in their own time.

Provide a Reason Why You Chose the Paper

Have the authors managed to circumvent sacrificing animals to achieve a goal that traditionally necessitated animal harm? Have the authors repurposed a method and applied it to a problem it’s not traditionally associated with? Is it simply a monumental feat of work and success?

People are probably more likely to listen and engage with you if they know why, in all politeness, you have chosen to use their time to talk about a given paper.

It also helps them focus on the relevant bits of your presentation and form cogent questions.

Orally Present Key Findings and Methods of the Paper

Simple. Read the paper. Understand it. Make some slides. Present.

Okay, there are a lot of ways you can get this wrong and make a hash of it. We’ll tell you how to avoid these pitfalls later on.

But for now, acknowledge that a journal club meeting starts with a presentation that sets up the main bit of it—the discussion.

Invite Your Audience to Participate in a Discussion

The discussion is the primary and arguably most beneficial component of journal club since it gives the audience a platform to share ideas. Ideas formulated by their previous experience.

And I’ve said already that these contributions are unique and have the potential to be valuable to your work.

That’s why the discussion element is important.

Their questions might concur and elaborate on the contents of the paper and your presentation of it.

Alternatively, they might disagree with the methods and/or conclusions. They might even disagree with your presentation of technical topics.

Try not to be daunted, however, as all of this ultimately adds to your knowledge, and it should all be conducted in a constructive spirit.

Summarize the Meeting and Thank Your Audience for Attending

There’s no particularly enlightening reason as to why to do these things. Summarizing helps people come away from the meeting feeling like it was a positive and rewarding thing to attend.

And thanking people for their time is a simple courtesy.

How Do You Organize It?

Basic steps if you are the organizer.

Okay, we’ve just learned what goes into speaking at the journal club. But presenter or not, the responsibility of organizing it might fall to you.

So, logistically , how do you prepare a journal club? Simply follow these 5 steps:

• Distribute copies of the research article to potential participants.
• Arrange a meeting time and location.
• Organize a speaker.
• Hold the journal club.
• Seek feedback on the quality of the meeting.

Apart from point 5, these are fairly self-explanatory. Regarding point 5, feedback is essential to growing as a scientist and presenter. The easiest way to seek feedback is simply to ask.

Alternatively, you could create a form for all the meetings in the series and ask the audience to complete and return it to you.

Basic Steps If You Are the Speaker

If somebody has done all the logistics for you, great! Don’t get complacent, however.

Why not use the time to elevate your presentation to make your journal club contribution memorable and beneficial?

Don’t worry about the “hows” because we’re going to elaborate on these points, but here are 5 things you can do to ace your presentation:

• Don’t leave it to the last minute.
• Know your audience.
• Keep your presentation slides simple.
• Keep your audience engaged.
• Be open to questions and critiques.

Regarding point 1, giving yourself sufficient time to thoroughly read the article you have chosen to present ensures you are familiar with the material in it. This is essential because you will be asked questions about it. A confident reply is the foundation of an enlightening discussion.

Regarding point 3, we’re going to tell you exactly how to prepare effective slides in its own section later. But if you are in a rush, minimize the use of excessive text. And if you provide background information, stick to diagrams that give an overview of results from previous work. Remember: a picture speaks louder than a thousand words.

Regarding point 4, engagement is critical. So carry out a practice run to make sure you are happy with the flow of your presentation and to give you an idea of your timing. It is important to stick to the time that is allotted for you.

This provides good practice for more formal conference settings where you will be stopped if you run over time. It’s also good manners and shows consideration for the attendees.

And regarding point 5, as the presenter, questions are likely to be directed toward you. So anticipate questions from the outset and prepare for the obvious ones to the best of your ability.

There’s a limit to everyone’s knowledge, but being unable to provide any sort of response will be embarrassing and make you seem unprepared.

Anticipate that people might also disagree with any definitions you make and even with your presentation of other people’s data. Whether or not you agree is a different matter, but present your reasons in a calm and professional manner.

If someone is rude, don’t rise to it and respond calmly and courteously. This shouldn’t happen too often, but we all have “those people” around us.

How Do You Choose a Journal Club Paper?

Consider the quality of the journal.

Just to be clear, I don’t mean the paper itself but the journal it’s published in.

An obscure journal is more likely to contain science that’s either boring, sloppy, wrong, or all three.

And people are giving up their time and hope to be stimulated. So oblige them!

Journal impact factor and rejection rate (the ratio of accepted to rejected articles) can help you decide whether a paper is worth discussing.

Consider the Impact and Scope of the Paper

Similar to the above, but remember, dross gets published in high-impact journals too. Hopefully, you’ve read the paper you want to present. But ask yourself what makes this particular paper stand out from the millions of others to be worth presenting.

Keep It Relevant and Keep It Interesting

When choosing a paper to present, keep your audience in mind. Choose something that is relevant to the particular group you are presenting to. If only you and a few other people understand the topic, it can come off as elitist.

How Do You Break Down and Present the Paper?

Know and provide the background material.

Before you dive into the data, spend a few minutes talking about the context of the paper. What did the authors know before they started this work? How did they formulate their hypothesis? Why did they choose to address it in this way?

You may want to reference an earlier paper from the same group if the paper represents a continuation of it, but keep it brief.

Try to explain how this paper tackles an unanswered question in the field.

Understand the Hypothesis and Methods of the Paper

Make a point of stating the  hypothesis  or  main question  of the paper, so everyone understands the goal of the study and has a foundation for the presentation and discussion.

Everyone needs to start on the same foot and remain on the same page as the meeting progresses.

Turn the Paper into a Progression of Scientific Questions

Present the data as a logical series of questions and answers. A well-written paper will already have done the hard work for you. It will be organized carefully so that each figure answers a specific question, and each new question builds on the answer from the previous figure.

If you’re having trouble grasping the flow of the paper, try writing up a brief outline of the main points. Try putting the experiments and conclusions in your own words, too.

Feel free to leave out parts of the figures that you think are unnecessary, or pull extra data from the supplemental figures if it will help you explain the paper better.

Ask Yourself Questions about the Paper Before You Present

We’ve touched on this already. This is to prepare you for any questions that are likely to be asked of you. When you read the paper, what bits didn’t you understand?

Simplify Unfamiliar and Difficult Concepts

Not everyone will be familiar with the same concepts. For example, most biologists will not have a rigorous definition of entropy committed to memory or know its units. The concept of entropy might crop up in a biophysics paper, however.

Put yourself in the audience’s shoes and anticipate what they might not fully understand given their respective backgrounds.

If you are unsure, ask them if they need a definition or include a short definition in your slides.

Sum Up Important Conclusions

After you’ve finished explaining the nitty-gritty details of the paper, conclude your presentation of the data with a list of significant findings.

Every conclusion will tie in directly to proving the major conclusion of the paper. It should be clear at this point how the data answers the main question.

How Do You Present a Journal Club Powerpoint?

Okay, so we’ve just gone through the steps required to break down a paper to present it effectively at journal club. But this needs to be paired with a PowerPoint presentation, and the two bridged orally by your talk. How do you ace this?

Provide Broad Context to the Research

We are all bogged down by minutia and reagents out of necessity.

Being bogged down is research. But it helps to come up for air. Ultimately, how will the research you are about to discuss benefit the Earth and its inhabitants when said research is translated into actual products?

Science can be for its own sake, but funded science rarely is. Reminding the journal club audience of the widest aims of the nominated field provides a clear starting point for the discussion and shows that you understand the efficacy of the research at its most basic level.

The Golden Rule: A Slide per Minute

Remember during lectures when the lecturer would open PowerPoint, and you would see, with dismay, that their slides went up to 90 or something daft? Then the last 20 get rushed through, but that’s what the exam question ends up being based on.

Don’t be that person!

A 10-15 minute talk should be accompanied by? 10-15 slides! Less is more.

Be Judicious about the Information You Choose to Present

If you are present everything in the paper, people might as well just read it in their own time, and we can call journal club off.

Try to abstract only the key findings. Sometimes technical data is necessary for what you are speaking about because their value affects the efficacy of the data and validity of the conclusions.

Most of the time, however, the exact experimental conditions can be left out and given on request. It’s good practice to put all the technical data that you anticipate being asked for in a few slides at the end of your talk.

Use your judgment.

Keep the Amount of Information per Slide Low for Clarity

Your audience is already listening to you and looking at the slides, so they have a limited capacity for what they can absorb. Overwhelming them with visual queues and talking to them will disengage them.

Have only a few clearly related images that apply directly to what you speaking about at the time. Annotate them with the only key facts from your talk and develop the bigger picture verbally.

This will be hard at first because you must be on the ball and confident with your subject area and speaking to an audience.

And definitely use circles, boxes, and arrows to highlight important parts of figures, and add a flowchart or diagram to explain an unfamiliar method.

Keep It Short Overall

The exact length of your meeting is up to you or the organizer. A 15-minute talk followed by a 30-minute discussion is about the right length, Add in tea and coffee and hellos, and you get to an hour.

We tend to speak at 125-150 words per minute. All these words should not be on your slides, however. So, commit a rough script to memory and rehearse it.

You’ll find that the main points you need to mention start to stand out and fall into place naturally. Plus, your slides will serve as visual queue cards.

How Do You Ask a Question in Journal Club?

A well-organized journal club will have clear expectations of whether or not questions should be asked only during the discussion, or whether interruptions during the presentation are allowed.

And I don’t mean literally how do you soliloquize, but rather how do you get an effective discussion going.

Presenters: Ask Questions to the Audience

We all know how it goes. “Any questions?” Silence.

Scientists, by their very nature, are usually introverted. Any ideas they might want to contribute to a discussion are typically outweighed by the fear of looking silly in front of their peers. Or they think everyone already knows the item they wish to contribute. Or don’t want to be publicly disproven. And so on.

Prepare some questions to ask the audience in advance. As soon as a few people speak, everyone tends to loosen up. Take advantage of this.

Audience: Think About Topics to Praise or Critique

Aside from seeking clarification on any unclear topics, you could ask questions on:

• Does the data support the conclusions?
• Are the conclusions relevant?
• Are the methods valid?
• What are the drawbacks and limitations of the conclusions?
• Are there better methods to test the hypothesis?
• How will the research be translated into real-world benefits?
• Are there obvious follow-up experiments?
• How well is the burden of proof met?
• Is the data physiologically relevant?
• Do you agree with the conclusions?

How to Keep It Fun

Make it interactive.

Quizzes and polls are a great way to do this! And QR codes make it really easy to do on-the-fly. Remember, scientists, are shy. So why not seek their participation in an anonymized form?

You could poll your audience on the quality of the work. You could make a fun quiz based on the material you’ve covered. You could do a live “what happened next?” You could even get your feedback this way. Here’s what to do:

• Create your quiz or poll using Google forms .
• Make a shareable link.
• Paste the link into a free QR code generator .
• Put the QR code in the appropriate bit of your talk.

Use Multimedia

Talking to your audience without anything to break it up is a guaranteed way of sending them all to sleep.

Consider embedding demonstration videos and animations in your talk. Or even just pausing to interject with your own anecdotes will keep everyone concentrated on you.

Keep It Informal

At the end of the day, we’re all scientists. Perhaps at different stages of our careers, but we’ve all had similar-ish trajectories. So there’s no need for haughtiness.

And research institutes are usually aggressively casual in terms of dress code, coffee breaks, and impromptu chats. Asking everyone to don a suit won’t add any value to a journal club.

Your Journal Club Toolkit in Summary

Anyone can read a paper, but the value lies in understanding it and applying it to your own research and thought process.

Remember, journal club is about extracting wisdom from your colleagues in the form of a discussion while disseminating wisdom to them in a digestible format.

Need some inspiration for your journal club? Check out the online repositories hosted by PNAS and NASPAG to get your juices flowing.

We’ve covered a lot of information, from parsing papers to organizational logistics, and effective presentation. So why not bookmark this page so you can come back to it all when it’s your turn to present?

While you’re here, why not ensure you’re always prepared for your next journal club and download bitesize bio’s free journal club checklist ?

And if you present at journal club and realize we’ve left something obvious out. Get in touch and let us know. We’ll add it to the article!

• Linzer M et al . (1988) Impact of a medical journal club on house-staff reading habits, knowledge, and critical appraisal skills . JAMA 260 :2537–41

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How to Prepare an Outstanding Journal Club Presentation

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Rishi Sawhney; How to Prepare an Outstanding Journal Club Presentation. The Hematologist 2006; 3 (1): No Pagination Specified. doi: https://doi.org/10.1182/hem.V3.1.1308

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Dr. Sawhney is a member of the ASH Trainee Council and a Fellow at the Medical University of South Carolina.

Journal club presentations provide a forum through which hematology trainees keep abreast of new developments in hematology and engage in informal discussion and interaction. Furthermore, honing presentation skills and mastering the ability to critically appraise the evidence add to our armamentarium as clinicians. Outlined here is a systematic approach to preparing a journal club presentation, with emphasis on key elements of the talk and references for electronic resources. Use of these tools and techniques will contribute to the success of your presentation.

I. ARTICLE SELECTION:

The foundation of an outstanding journal club presentation rests on the choice of an interesting and well-written paper for discussion. Several resources are available to help you select important and timely research, including the American College of Physicians (ACP) Journal Club and the Diffusion section of The Hematologist . McMaster University has created the McMaster Online Rating of Evidence (MORE) system to identify the highest-quality published research. In fact, the ACP Journal Club uses the MORE system to select their articles 1 . Specific inclusion criteria have been delineated in order to distinguish papers with the highest scientific merit 2 . Articles that have passed this screening are then rated by clinicians on their clinical relevance and newsworthiness, using a graded scale 3 . With the help of your mentors and colleagues, you can use these criteria and the rating scale as informal guidelines to ensure that your chosen article merits presentation.

II. ARTICLE PRESENTATION:

Study Background: This section provides your audience with the necessary information and context for a thoughtful and critical evaluation of the article's significance. The goals are 1) to describe the rationale for and clinical relevance of the study question, and 2) to highlight the preclinical and clinical research that led to the current trial. Review the papers referenced in the study's "Background" section as well as previous work by the study's authors. It also may be helpful to discuss data supporting the current standard of care against which the study intervention is being measured.

Study Methodology and Results: Clearly describe the study population, including inclusion/exclusion criteria. A diagrammatic schema is easy to construct using PowerPoint software and will help to clearly illustrate treatment arms in complex trials. Explain the statistical methods, obtaining assistance from a statistician if needed. Take this opportunity to verbally and graphically highlight key results from the study, with plans to expand on their significance later in your presentation.

Author's Discussion: Present the authors' conclusions and their perspective on the study results, including explanations of inconsistent or unexpected results. Consider whether the conclusions drawn are supported by the data presented.

III. ARTICLE CRITIQUE:

This component of your presentation will define the success of your journal club. A useful and widely accepted approach to this analysis has been published in JAMA's series "User's guide to the medical literature." The Centre for Health Evidence in Canada has made the complete full-text set of these user's guides available online 4 . This site offers review guidelines for a menu of article types, and it is an excellent, comprehensive resource to focus your study critique. A practical, user-friendly approach to literature evaluation that includes a worksheet is also available on the ASH Web site for your use 5 .

While a comprehensive discussion of scientific literature appraisal is beyond the scope of this discussion, several helpful tips warrant mention here. In assessing the validity of the study, it is important to assess for potential sources of bias, including the funding sources and authors' affiliations. It is also helpful to look for accompanying editorial commentary, which can provide a unique perspective on the article and highlight controversial issues. You should plan to discuss the trade-offs between potential benefits of the study intervention versus potential risks and the cost. By utilizing the concept of number needed to treat (NNT), one can assess the true impact of the study intervention on clinical practice. Furthermore, by incorporating the incidence rates of clinically significant toxicities with the financial costs into the NNT, you can generate a rather sophisticated analysis of the study's impact on practice.

IV. CONCLUSIONS, IMPLICATIONS, AND FUTURE DIRECTIONS:

Restate the authors' take-home message followed by your own interpretation of the study. Provide a personal perspective, detailing why you find this paper interesting or important. Then, look forward and use this opportunity to "think outside the box." Do you envision these study results changing the landscape of clinical practice or redirecting research in this field? If so, how? In articles about therapy, future directions may include moving the therapy up to first-line setting, assessing the drug in combination regimens or other disease states, or developing same-class novel compounds in the pipeline. Searching for related clinical trials on the NIH Web site 6  can prove helpful, as can consultation with an expert in this field.

Good journal club discussions are integral to the educational experience of hematology trainees. Following the above approach, while utilizing the resources available, will lay the groundwork for an outstanding presentation.

WEB BASED REFERENCES

www.acpjc.org

hiru.mcmaster.ca/more/InclusionCriteria.htm

hiru.mcmaster.ca/more/RatingFormSample.htm

www.cche.net/main.asp

www.hematology.org/Trainees

www.cancer.gov/clinicaltrials

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Open Access

Ten simple rules for effective presentation slides

* E-mail: [email protected]

Affiliation Biomedical Engineering and the Center for Public Health Genomics, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, Virginia, United States of America

• Kristen M. Naegle

Published: December 2, 2021

• https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pcbi.1009554
• Reader Comments

Citation: Naegle KM (2021) Ten simple rules for effective presentation slides. PLoS Comput Biol 17(12): e1009554. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pcbi.1009554

Copyright: © 2021 Kristen M. Naegle. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Funding: The author received no specific funding for this work.

Competing interests: The author has declared no competing interests exist.

Introduction

The “presentation slide” is the building block of all academic presentations, whether they are journal clubs, thesis committee meetings, short conference talks, or hour-long seminars. A slide is a single page projected on a screen, usually built on the premise of a title, body, and figures or tables and includes both what is shown and what is spoken about that slide. Multiple slides are strung together to tell the larger story of the presentation. While there have been excellent 10 simple rules on giving entire presentations [ 1 , 2 ], there was an absence in the fine details of how to design a slide for optimal effect—such as the design elements that allow slides to convey meaningful information, to keep the audience engaged and informed, and to deliver the information intended and in the time frame allowed. As all research presentations seek to teach, effective slide design borrows from the same principles as effective teaching, including the consideration of cognitive processing your audience is relying on to organize, process, and retain information. This is written for anyone who needs to prepare slides from any length scale and for most purposes of conveying research to broad audiences. The rules are broken into 3 primary areas. Rules 1 to 5 are about optimizing the scope of each slide. Rules 6 to 8 are about principles around designing elements of the slide. Rules 9 to 10 are about preparing for your presentation, with the slides as the central focus of that preparation.

Rule 1: Include only one idea per slide

Each slide should have one central objective to deliver—the main idea or question [ 3 – 5 ]. Often, this means breaking complex ideas down into manageable pieces (see Fig 1 , where “background” information has been split into 2 key concepts). In another example, if you are presenting a complex computational approach in a large flow diagram, introduce it in smaller units, building it up until you finish with the entire diagram. The progressive buildup of complex information means that audiences are prepared to understand the whole picture, once you have dedicated time to each of the parts. You can accomplish the buildup of components in several ways—for example, using presentation software to cover/uncover information. Personally, I choose to create separate slides for each piece of information content I introduce—where the final slide has the entire diagram, and I use cropping or a cover on duplicated slides that come before to hide what I’m not yet ready to include. I use this method in order to ensure that each slide in my deck truly presents one specific idea (the new content) and the amount of the new information on that slide can be described in 1 minute (Rule 2), but it comes with the trade-off—a change to the format of one of the slides in the series often means changes to all slides.

• PPT PowerPoint slide
• PNG larger image
• TIFF original image

Top left: A background slide that describes the background material on a project from my lab. The slide was created using a PowerPoint Design Template, which had to be modified to increase default text sizes for this figure (i.e., the default text sizes are even worse than shown here). Bottom row: The 2 new slides that break up the content into 2 explicit ideas about the background, using a central graphic. In the first slide, the graphic is an explicit example of the SH2 domain of PI3-kinase interacting with a phosphorylation site (Y754) on the PDGFR to describe the important details of what an SH2 domain and phosphotyrosine ligand are and how they interact. I use that same graphic in the second slide to generalize all binding events and include redundant text to drive home the central message (a lot of possible interactions might occur in the human proteome, more than we can currently measure). Top right highlights which rules were used to move from the original slide to the new slide. Specific changes as highlighted by Rule 7 include increasing contrast by changing the background color, increasing font size, changing to sans serif fonts, and removing all capital text and underlining (using bold to draw attention). PDGFR, platelet-derived growth factor receptor.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pcbi.1009554.g001

Rule 2: Spend only 1 minute per slide

When you present your slide in the talk, it should take 1 minute or less to discuss. This rule is really helpful for planning purposes—a 20-minute presentation should have somewhere around 20 slides. Also, frequently giving your audience new information to feast on helps keep them engaged. During practice, if you find yourself spending more than a minute on a slide, there’s too much for that one slide—it’s time to break up the content into multiple slides or even remove information that is not wholly central to the story you are trying to tell. Reduce, reduce, reduce, until you get to a single message, clearly described, which takes less than 1 minute to present.

Rule 3: Make use of your heading

When each slide conveys only one message, use the heading of that slide to write exactly the message you are trying to deliver. Instead of titling the slide “Results,” try “CTNND1 is central to metastasis” or “False-positive rates are highly sample specific.” Use this landmark signpost to ensure that all the content on that slide is related exactly to the heading and only the heading. Think of the slide heading as the introductory or concluding sentence of a paragraph and the slide content the rest of the paragraph that supports the main point of the paragraph. An audience member should be able to follow along with you in the “paragraph” and come to the same conclusion sentence as your header at the end of the slide.

Rule 4: Include only essential points

While you are speaking, audience members’ eyes and minds will be wandering over your slide. If you have a comment, detail, or figure on a slide, have a plan to explicitly identify and talk about it. If you don’t think it’s important enough to spend time on, then don’t have it on your slide. This is especially important when faculty are present. I often tell students that thesis committee members are like cats: If you put a shiny bauble in front of them, they’ll go after it. Be sure to only put the shiny baubles on slides that you want them to focus on. Putting together a thesis meeting for only faculty is really an exercise in herding cats (if you have cats, you know this is no easy feat). Clear and concise slide design will go a long way in helping you corral those easily distracted faculty members.

Rule 5: Give credit, where credit is due

An exception to Rule 4 is to include proper citations or references to work on your slide. When adding citations, names of other researchers, or other types of credit, use a consistent style and method for adding this information to your slides. Your audience will then be able to easily partition this information from the other content. A common mistake people make is to think “I’ll add that reference later,” but I highly recommend you put the proper reference on the slide at the time you make it, before you forget where it came from. Finally, in certain kinds of presentations, credits can make it clear who did the work. For the faculty members heading labs, it is an effective way to connect your audience with the personnel in the lab who did the work, which is a great career booster for that person. For graduate students, it is an effective way to delineate your contribution to the work, especially in meetings where the goal is to establish your credentials for meeting the rigors of a PhD checkpoint.

Rule 6: Use graphics effectively

As a rule, you should almost never have slides that only contain text. Build your slides around good visualizations. It is a visual presentation after all, and as they say, a picture is worth a thousand words. However, on the flip side, don’t muddy the point of the slide by putting too many complex graphics on a single slide. A multipanel figure that you might include in a manuscript should often be broken into 1 panel per slide (see Rule 1 ). One way to ensure that you use the graphics effectively is to make a point to introduce the figure and its elements to the audience verbally, especially for data figures. For example, you might say the following: “This graph here shows the measured false-positive rate for an experiment and each point is a replicate of the experiment, the graph demonstrates …” If you have put too much on one slide to present in 1 minute (see Rule 2 ), then the complexity or number of the visualizations is too much for just one slide.

Rule 7: Design to avoid cognitive overload

The type of slide elements, the number of them, and how you present them all impact the ability for the audience to intake, organize, and remember the content. For example, a frequent mistake in slide design is to include full sentences, but reading and verbal processing use the same cognitive channels—therefore, an audience member can either read the slide, listen to you, or do some part of both (each poorly), as a result of cognitive overload [ 4 ]. The visual channel is separate, allowing images/videos to be processed with auditory information without cognitive overload [ 6 ] (Rule 6). As presentations are an exercise in listening, and not reading, do what you can to optimize the ability of the audience to listen. Use words sparingly as “guide posts” to you and the audience about major points of the slide. In fact, you can add short text fragments, redundant with the verbal component of the presentation, which has been shown to improve retention [ 7 ] (see Fig 1 for an example of redundant text that avoids cognitive overload). Be careful in the selection of a slide template to minimize accidentally adding elements that the audience must process, but are unimportant. David JP Phillips argues (and effectively demonstrates in his TEDx talk [ 5 ]) that the human brain can easily interpret 6 elements and more than that requires a 500% increase in human cognition load—so keep the total number of elements on the slide to 6 or less. Finally, in addition to the use of short text, white space, and the effective use of graphics/images, you can improve ease of cognitive processing further by considering color choices and font type and size. Here are a few suggestions for improving the experience for your audience, highlighting the importance of these elements for some specific groups:

• Use high contrast colors and simple backgrounds with low to no color—for persons with dyslexia or visual impairment.
• Use sans serif fonts and large font sizes (including figure legends), avoid italics, underlining (use bold font instead for emphasis), and all capital letters—for persons with dyslexia or visual impairment [ 8 ].
• Use color combinations and palettes that can be understood by those with different forms of color blindness [ 9 ]. There are excellent tools available to identify colors to use and ways to simulate your presentation or figures as they might be seen by a person with color blindness (easily found by a web search).
• In this increasing world of virtual presentation tools, consider practicing your talk with a closed captioning system capture your words. Use this to identify how to improve your speaking pace, volume, and annunciation to improve understanding by all members of your audience, but especially those with a hearing impairment.

Rule 8: Design the slide so that a distracted person gets the main takeaway

It is very difficult to stay focused on a presentation, especially if it is long or if it is part of a longer series of talks at a conference. Audience members may get distracted by an important email, or they may start dreaming of lunch. So, it’s important to look at your slide and ask “If they heard nothing I said, will they understand the key concept of this slide?” The other rules are set up to help with this, including clarity of the single point of the slide (Rule 1), titling it with a major conclusion (Rule 3), and the use of figures (Rule 6) and short text redundant to your verbal description (Rule 7). However, with each slide, step back and ask whether its main conclusion is conveyed, even if someone didn’t hear your accompanying dialog. Importantly, ask if the information on the slide is at the right level of abstraction. For example, do you have too many details about the experiment, which hides the conclusion of the experiment (i.e., breaking Rule 1)? If you are worried about not having enough details, keep a slide at the end of your slide deck (after your conclusions and acknowledgments) with the more detailed information that you can refer to during a question and answer period.

Rule 9: Iteratively improve slide design through practice

Well-designed slides that follow the first 8 rules are intended to help you deliver the message you intend and in the amount of time you intend to deliver it in. The best way to ensure that you nailed slide design for your presentation is to practice, typically a lot. The most important aspects of practicing a new presentation, with an eye toward slide design, are the following 2 key points: (1) practice to ensure that you hit, each time through, the most important points (for example, the text guide posts you left yourself and the title of the slide); and (2) practice to ensure that as you conclude the end of one slide, it leads directly to the next slide. Slide transitions, what you say as you end one slide and begin the next, are important to keeping the flow of the “story.” Practice is when I discover that the order of my presentation is poor or that I left myself too few guideposts to remember what was coming next. Additionally, during practice, the most frequent things I have to improve relate to Rule 2 (the slide takes too long to present, usually because I broke Rule 1, and I’m delivering too much information for one slide), Rule 4 (I have a nonessential detail on the slide), and Rule 5 (I forgot to give a key reference). The very best type of practice is in front of an audience (for example, your lab or peers), where, with fresh perspectives, they can help you identify places for improving slide content, design, and connections across the entirety of your talk.

Rule 10: Design to mitigate the impact of technical disasters

The real presentation almost never goes as we planned in our heads or during our practice. Maybe the speaker before you went over time and now you need to adjust. Maybe the computer the organizer is having you use won’t show your video. Maybe your internet is poor on the day you are giving a virtual presentation at a conference. Technical problems are routinely part of the practice of sharing your work through presentations. Hence, you can design your slides to limit the impact certain kinds of technical disasters create and also prepare alternate approaches. Here are just a few examples of the preparation you can do that will take you a long way toward avoiding a complete fiasco:

• Save your presentation as a PDF—if the version of Keynote or PowerPoint on a host computer cause issues, you still have a functional copy that has a higher guarantee of compatibility.
• In using videos, create a backup slide with screen shots of key results. For example, if I have a video of cell migration, I’ll be sure to have a copy of the start and end of the video, in case the video doesn’t play. Even if the video worked, you can pause on this backup slide and take the time to highlight the key results in words if someone could not see or understand the video.
• Avoid animations, such as figures or text that flash/fly-in/etc. Surveys suggest that no one likes movement in presentations [ 3 , 4 ]. There is likely a cognitive underpinning to the almost universal distaste of pointless animations that relates to the idea proposed by Kosslyn and colleagues that animations are salient perceptual units that captures direct attention [ 4 ]. Although perceptual salience can be used to draw attention to and improve retention of specific points, if you use this approach for unnecessary/unimportant things (like animation of your bullet point text, fly-ins of figures, etc.), then you will distract your audience from the important content. Finally, animations cause additional processing burdens for people with visual impairments [ 10 ] and create opportunities for technical disasters if the software on the host system is not compatible with your planned animation.

Conclusions

These rules are just a start in creating more engaging presentations that increase audience retention of your material. However, there are wonderful resources on continuing on the journey of becoming an amazing public speaker, which includes understanding the psychology and neuroscience behind human perception and learning. For example, as highlighted in Rule 7, David JP Phillips has a wonderful TEDx talk on the subject [ 5 ], and “PowerPoint presentation flaws and failures: A psychological analysis,” by Kosslyn and colleagues is deeply detailed about a number of aspects of human cognition and presentation style [ 4 ]. There are many books on the topic, including the popular “Presentation Zen” by Garr Reynolds [ 11 ]. Finally, although briefly touched on here, the visualization of data is an entire topic of its own that is worth perfecting for both written and oral presentations of work, with fantastic resources like Edward Tufte’s “The Visual Display of Quantitative Information” [ 12 ] or the article “Visualization of Biomedical Data” by O’Donoghue and colleagues [ 13 ].

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank the countless presenters, colleagues, students, and mentors from which I have learned a great deal from on effective presentations. Also, a thank you to the wonderful resources published by organizations on how to increase inclusivity. A special thanks to Dr. Jason Papin and Dr. Michael Guertin on early feedback of this editorial.

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• 3. Teaching VUC for Making Better PowerPoint Presentations. n.d. Available from: https://cft.vanderbilt.edu/guides-sub-pages/making-better-powerpoint-presentations/#baddeley .
• 8. Creating a dyslexia friendly workplace. Dyslexia friendly style guide. nd. Available from: https://www.bdadyslexia.org.uk/advice/employers/creating-a-dyslexia-friendly-workplace/dyslexia-friendly-style-guide .
• 9. Cravit R. How to Use Color Blind Friendly Palettes to Make Your Charts Accessible. 2019. Available from: https://venngage.com/blog/color-blind-friendly-palette/ .
• 10. Making your conference presentation more accessible to blind and partially sighted people. n.d. Available from: https://vocaleyes.co.uk/services/resources/guidelines-for-making-your-conference-presentation-more-accessible-to-blind-and-partially-sighted-people/ .
• 11. Reynolds G. Presentation Zen: Simple Ideas on Presentation Design and Delivery. 2nd ed. New Riders Pub; 2011.
• 12. Tufte ER. The Visual Display of Quantitative Information. 2nd ed. Graphics Press; 2001.

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50 Inspiring Journal Prompts to Spark Your Creativity

Sanjana is a health writer and editor. Her work spans various health-related topics, including mental health, fitness, nutrition, and wellness.

Rachel Goldman, PhD FTOS, is a licensed psychologist, clinical assistant professor, speaker, wellness expert specializing in eating behaviors, stress management, and health behavior change.

Cavan Images / Getty Images

Benefits of Using Journal Prompts

How to use journal prompts, journal prompts you can try, how do you come up with a journal prompt.

A journal can be a trusted companion that helps you reflect on your thoughts, feelings, actions, decisions, and relationships. Research shows that journaling is linked to better planning, lower stress, and better physical and mental health.

Whether you write in your journal regularly or you’re just getting started, you might sometimes find yourself staring at a blank page and wondering what to write. If you’re at a loss for words, a journal prompt can come to the rescue.

Journal prompts are suggestions, ideas, or questions that can help guide and inspire your journal entries, says Sabrina Romanoff , PsyD, a clinical psychologist and professor at Yeshiva University.

“Prompts are typically themes to reflect on or questions that are meant to motivate you to think deeper about something,” Dr. Romanoff adds.

In this article, we suggest some journal prompts that can spark your creativity . We also ask the expert for some strategies that can help you create your own journal prompts.

Prompted journaling, also known as guided journaling, offers several benefits:

• Starting point: If you’ve never tried journaling before or if you’re experiencing writer’s block, journal prompts can help you get started.
• Direction: Prompts can provide direction to your writing, says Dr. Romanoff. By focusing on a specific topic or question, you can explore your thoughts and feelings around it. 
• Structure: Sometimes, you might prefer to write down your thoughts freely as they occur. However, there may be times when you want to organize your thoughts more coherently. Journal prompts can provide the structure you need to organize your thoughts.
• Creativity: Using different journal prompts can introduce variety to your journaling experience. It can encourage you to think more creatively and approach things from different angles.
• Insight: Journal prompts can provide topics or themes that help you explore fresh perspectives and new dimensions of yourself, says Dr. Romanoff. This process can help you discover personal insights and promote greater self-awareness .
• Consistency: Having a prompt to guide each journaling session can encourage you to maintain a regular journaling practice. The prompts can make journaling feel like a purposeful and engaging activity, which may help you be more consistent with it.

These are some strategies that can help you use journal prompts:

• Find prompts that inspire you: Dr. Romanoff suggests making a list of prompts that you find inspiring or motivating—you can come up with your own, buy a journal with prompts, or look online for examples.
• Decide your frequency: It can be helpful to set a frequency for journaling, such as daily, weekly, monthly or at any other interval that works for you. You can use prompts every time you journal or just when you’re feeling stagnant and craving inspiration or motivation for your journaling session, says Dr. Romanoff.
• Keep an open mind: Approach prompted journaling with an open mind . Reflect on the prompt and explore where it takes you. You can write as much or as little as you like. 
• Get creative: Don’t be afraid to get creative with your responses or limit yourself only to words. You can even pen down your thoughts and feelings in the form of drawings or poetry, if you prefer.
• Be honest and authentic: Honesty is key to getting the most out of journaling. Write from the heart and don't be afraid to express your true feelings, even if they are complex or challenging.
• Reflect on your responses: After you've written your responses, take a moment to reflect on what you've written. Consider how your thoughts and emotions have evolved over the course of writing them down.

These are some journal prompts that can help you get started.

Self-Discovery Prompts

Self-discovery prompts can help you self-reflect and get to know yourself better. Greater self-awareness is linked to improved emotional intelligence.

These are some journal prompts that can enable self-discovery:

• First, list five words that best describe you. Then, think about which five words you would like to describe yourself.
• Complete this sentence: “My life would be incomplete without….”
• Reflect on a phrase, quote, or mantra that resonates with you. Explain why it’s significant to you.
• Make a list of the things in your life that you’re most grateful for.
• Explain what you do best.
• Reflect on the qualities that you value most in others.
• Share three things that made you smile today.
• List your best and worst habits.
• Write down three life lessons you’ve learned.
• Explain what love means to you.
• Describe the values that are most important to you and consider whether your actions align with them.
• Think about what you would do with your life if you had unlimited resources and explain why.
• Describe what is stressing you out and how you’re coping with it.
• Write about your biggest regret and what you would do differently in hindsight.
• Identify and label the fears and insecurities that are holding you back right now.

Personal Growth Prompts

These are some journal prompts that can encourage personal growth:

• What are three short-term goals you would like to achieve within the next three months?
• What are three long-term goals you would like to achieve within the next five years?
• Which skill would you like to cultivate in yourself?
• Which qualities do you admire most in others that you would like to develop in yourself?
• Which areas of your life would benefit from more self-discipline ?
• What is your worst habit and how would you change it?
• What’s something new you would like to try?
• What habit do you want to add to your daily routine?
• What would you like to contribute to your community?
• What is the biggest challenge you’re dealing with right now?
• What is the biggest failure you’ve ever faced and what have you learned from it?
• How would you like to be remembered by others?
• How can you better support your loved ones?
• What boundaries would you like to set in your relationships to protect yourself?

Mindfulness Prompts

Mindfulness prompts can help you become more aware of your thoughts, emotions, senses, and surroundings. Being more mindful can help you be more intentional and purposeful in the way you live your life.

These are some journal prompts that can support greater mindfulness:

• Describe a meal you ate today. What colors, textures, tastes, and feelings did you experience?
• Pick an everyday object from your surroundings, like a plant or a pencil. Write a detailed description of it as if you've never seen it before.
• Focus on a sound in the background, such as the ticking of a clock or the rustling of the breeze. Describe the sound and its impact on you.
• Close your eyes for a minute and pay attention to your breath. When you open your eyes, write down what it felt like.
• Describe your ideal day from morning to night. What activities, people, and experiences would be part of it?
• Reflect on your thoughts without judgment . Identify and describe any feelings you're experiencing in the present moment.
• Write about a recent interaction with someone. What were their words, expressions, and gestures? How did you feel during the interaction?
• Think back to a moment of happiness you experienced recently. Relive the sensations, thoughts, and emotions associated with it.
• Think about the place where you feel most at peace. What makes it special to you?
• Recall a time when you were worrying about something in the future. How did it affect your present moment and what would you have done differently?

Creativity Prompts

These are some journal prompts that can spark creativity :

• Write a letter to your favorite fictional character, describing your life to them.
• Make a list of questions you would like to ask a future version of yourself.
• Think about your favorite word or phrase. Explain why you love it.
• Choose a random object from your surroundings. What qualities do you have in common with it?
• Make a list of ten unusual ways to use a common household item. Get creative and think outside the box.
• Write a conversation between two inanimate objects, giving them personalities and voices.
• Invent a gadget that would make your life more efficient or interesting.
• Choose a word from a foreign language that doesn't have a direct English translation. Describe the last time you encountered or experienced it.
• Imagine you get the chance to be any animal for a day. Which animal would you pick and what would you do?
• Invent a new holiday and outline the traditions, celebrations, and rituals associated with it, based on your values.
• If you have a time machine and you can go anywhere in the past or future, where would you go and what would you do there?

These are some strategies that can help you come up with your own journal prompts:

• Decide your goals: First, consider what your goal of journaling is and then work backwards to find ways to achieve that goal, says Dr. Romanoff. For instance, she says gratitude , relationships, learning, self-growth, or creativity are goals that you might want to pursue.
• Find prompts that align with your goals: Write down a few prompts that resonate with you and align with your current goals, interests, or areas of focus. You can add more or tweak them as you go along.
• Mix and match different prompts: Feel free to mix and match prompts from different sources or create your own variations. Experiment with different types of prompts to keep your journaling practice engaging and varied.
• Build on existing prompts: If a prompt leads you to new insights or questions, consider exploring those ideas in subsequent journal entries. You can use your initial response as a springboard for deeper exploration.

Journaling can be a form of self-care , a way to connect with yourself, or a creative exercise. 

If you enjoy journaling, having prompts can help guide your thoughts and focus your attention in a specific direction. Having a new journal prompt to work on every time you’re in the mood to journal can be exciting, comforting, and even a little scary. Just think of each prompt as an opportunity to learn something new about yourself.

Pena‐Silva RA, Velasco‐Castro JM, Matsingos C, Jaramillo‐Rincon SX. Journaling as an effective tool to promote metacognition and enhance study methods in a pharmacology course, during and after the pandemic . FASEB J . 2022;36(Suppl 1):10.1096/fasebj.2022.36.S1.R4840. doi:10.1096/fasebj.2022.36.S1.R4840

Drigas AS, Papoutsi C. A new layered model on emotional intelligence . Behav Sci (Basel) . 2018;8(5):45. doi:10.3390/bs8050045

Crego A, Yela JR, Gómez-Martínez MÁ, Riesco-Matías P, Petisco-Rodríguez C. Relationships between mindfulness, purpose in life, happiness, anxiety, and depression: testing a mediation model in a sample of women . Int J Environ Res Public Health . 2021;18(3):925. doi:10.3390/ijerph18030925

By Sanjana Gupta Sanjana is a health writer and editor. Her work spans various health-related topics, including mental health, fitness, nutrition, and wellness.

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• An Effective Journal Club Presentation: A Guide

Prabhaharan Renganathan a, *, Suresh S. Venkita b

Technical Editor – Kauverian Medical Journal, Kauvery Hospital, Trichy, India

Group Medical Director, Kauvery Hospitals, India

*Correspondence:  [email protected] (R. Prabhaharan);  [email protected] (Dr. Suresh Venkita)

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What is a Journal Club?

A journal club is a dedicated meeting where medical practitioners gather to discuss published articles from peer-reviewed journals. These meetings help fellows and residents keep up with current research findings, exercise their critical thinking skills, and improve their presentation and debating abilities. A journal club is a core element of residency and fellowship training in almost every medical specialty.

History of Journal Club

A journal club is a form of meeting regularly held among health practitioners to discuss recently published literature. The first organized journal club is credited to Sir William Osler, one of the greatest teachers in Medicine, at Montreal, Canada, in 1875, although Sir James Paget described a kind of club among some pupils at St Bartholomew’s Hospital in London to read journals together in the period 1835 to 1854. Approximately a decade later, Osler started the first journal club in the United States at the Johns Hopkins Hospital in 1889 [1]. During the next 100 years and after, it has flourished in various disciplines in the medical field in many countries.

Formats of Journal Club

The format of a journal club has evolved over decades. The most commonly recognized formats include a traditional journal club format and a more recently introduced evidence-based format [2].

Traditional journal club

In the traditional journal club, one trainee presents previously selected articles, and attendees discuss the results and findings. Senior faculty give comments mainly based on their expertise and clinical experience.

Evidence-based journal club

The articles are chosen based on clinical questions arising from clinical practice. Discussions include the critical appraisal of methodological aspects of the study and whether the findings would modify clinical practice.

Recently, an innovative flipped journal club was introduced [3].

Flipped journal club

Flipped format requires senior faculty to select an important clinical topic and a related landmark article, and trainees to select an accompanying background paper and a social medical piece, while also preparing an in-depth discussion in advance.

In recent years, virtual, online, journal club has become increasingly popular.

Online journal club

Large institutions usually decide the topics for discussion and organize the journal club, whereas participants from other centres contribute to the discussion. This format provides great opportunities for practitioners in community hospitals to get updated.

However, each journal club format has its advantages and disadvantages (Table 1). Therefore, the flexible integration of different formats may be considered to fulfil various objectives.

Table 1.  Advantages and disadvantages of different formats of a journal club

Principle Objectives of a Journal Club

•  The primary goal of a journal club is gaining knowledge on the advances in the medical field, together with improving presenting and communication skills for the residents and fellows.
• Practice-based learning and keeping up-to-date with medical knowledge shall become the core element of a journal club.

Choosing pertinent articles

• Articles may be selected based on their clinical relevance or educational value.
• A 5-crucial-steps method to select a paper include screening of (1) title, (2) authors, (3) abstract, (4) figures and tables and (5) references.
• Either one or a few related articles can be selected and presented in the journal club.
• Choosing original articles are suitable for improving critique skills, whereas reviews, including meta-analyses, are also great resources for a quick review of the background information and keeping medical knowledge up-to-date.

Template of a Journal Club

A journal club could be structured through a series of questions.

Background and overview

• Study Citation:  Cite your article here using proper format.
• Purpose/Background:  Give a brief summary about why this study is important. You can also provide a short background on the drug, disease state, or procedure that is being evaluated. In addition, relevant literature on the subject can be discussed.
• Study Objective : The objective, study aim or goal, should be clearly stated in the article and copied directly so as not the meaning does not get changed.
• Historical Context : What other related trials have been done prior to this study? Discuss any other relevant literature on the subject here. Be sure to cite these below in the reference list.
• Retrospective vs. prospective
• Randomization
• Case control vs. RCT vs. meta-analysis
• Superiority vs. non-inferiority
• Multicenter vs. single site
• Describe the interventions performed in the trial.
• What was the dose of the medications used?
• How often were they administered?
• Was there a washout period for study drugs?
• Was there an enrolment period to determine adherence?
• How were study participants randomized (i.e. 1:1, 1:2:1, etc.)?
• How long was the intervention period?
• What was the median follow-up time-frame?
• Was the follow-up period similar between the groups?
• Primary outcome/endpoint
• Secondary outcomes/endpoints
• What statistical tests were used for each set of data?
• Were these tests were appropriate for your discussion?
• Did the study include a sample size calculation?
• You may include tables and/or points to describe and summarize the main results.
• Be sure to include how many patients dropped out of the study and why?
• Be sure to include the results of the primary and secondary endpoints, statistical significance (e.g. p-value, confidence interval, etc.)
• Consider directing the audience/readers to a specific table/figure within the article if available.
• Consider also including number needed to treat (NNT) or number needed to harm (NNH).
• Address noteworthy adverse event rates (if applicable).

Discussion and Conclusions

• Strengths:  List them here. Examples: large sample size, external validity, etc.
• Limitations:  What could be improved about the study design? What weakens the overall impact of the trial? (e.g. internal/external validity, statistical vs. clinical significance, inclusion/exclusion criteria appropriateness).
• Author’s discussion and conclusion Summarize the author’s conclusion from the article.
• Personal discussion and conclusion Present your conclusions. You may reference other articles and how findings from those might play a role in interpreting this study.
• Application to Patient Care How will you use this information in practice (consider your practice site specifically)?

Conclusions

The main purpose, and format of the journal club is focussed on the specific educational goals – to gain knowledge about advances in the medical field, and to improve the skills of presentation and communication. The journal club has been recognized as an efficient tool in graduate medical training.

• Linzer M. The journal club and medical education: over one hundred years of unrecorded history. Postgrad Med J. 1987;63:475-8.
• Mohr NM, Stoltze AJ, Harland KK, et al. An evidence-based medicine curriculum implemented in journal club improves resident performance on the Fresno test. J Emerg Med. 2015; 48:222.e1-9.e1.
• Bounds R, Boone S. The flipped journal club. West J Emerg Med. 2018;19:23-7.
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• THE FALLACIES OF PERFECTION
• Difficult to Treat Epilepsy: A Management Primer for Non-Neurologists
• Clinical audit: A Simplified Approachs
• Rationalise and Restrict Antibiotic Use by Utilizing A Proactive Justification Form and Comparing with Earlier Antibiotic Usage in The Same Paediatric Unit in A Tertiary Care Centre
• COVID-19 and Fungal Infection – An Opportune Time: A Case Series
• Thymidine phosphorylase (TYMP) gene stop mutation, G38X, in a familial case of mitochondrial neurogastrointestinal encephalomyopathy
• Image Challenge
• PATIENT’S STORY
• ANTHOLOGY OF POEMS
• Hypertension – a renal disease
• A New Cause for Confusion or Concern – A Case Series
• A rare case of acute aortic dissection secondary to a penetrating aortic ulcer in the ascending aorta
• Pacemaker in children – big shoes to fill for small foot
• The Eight Roles of The Medical Teacher – The Purpose and Functions of a Teacher in The Healthcare Professions by Ronald M. Harden & Pat Lilley
• Reducing the stock items – Need to look at the whole picture
• DIAGNOSTIC IMAGES
• Mountain behind a mountain
• The Disappearing Act
• TO CRUSH OR NOT TO CRUSH? DON’T RUSH TO CRUSH!
• Effectiveness of Pre – Clinical Competency Certification Program on Improving Knowledge of Clinical Practice Among Nursing Internship Students
• Medical Statistics in Clinical Research – Mean, Median, Standard Deviation, p-value, Chi Squared test
• Vertebral artery dissection with thrombosis causing neuralgic amyotrophy
• Atypical Electrical Alternans Due to Large Left Pleural Effusion
• Early presentation of a rare disorder
• GUEST EDITORIAL
• Clinical MIS – A Clinical Analyst Review
• Eclampsia and HELLP Syndrome: A Case Report
• Percutaneous Device Closure in A Toddler with PDA and Interrupted IVC
• Pediatric Car Passenger Trauma – A Case Report and A Review of Child Safety Inside a Car
• Use Of Antibody Cocktail, Regn-Cov2, In Two Non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma (NHL) Patients with Mild Covid-19 Disease, At A Tertiary Care Hospital in South India: A Case Series
• Neurology Update
• The Patient Is Always Right
• Humanity’s Most Cherished Fiction
• Mucormycosis in COVID-19: A Clinico-Microbiological Dilemma
• ANAEMIA OR HYDROCELE – WHICH SHOULD BE DEALT WITH FIRST
• OUR EXPERIENCE WITH COVID-19 RELATED MUCORMYCOSIS
• DVT in a child: A case to introspect
• Rainbow within a storm
• Reversal of Dabigatran in patients with intracerebral haemorrhage – a narrative review
• STEREOTACTIC BODY RADIOTHERAPY – VT TREATMENT
• TO BOOST OR NOT TO BOOST? INDIAN PERSPECTIVES – COVID VACCINATION
• Convalescent Plasma Therapy in Covid-19: A Question of Timing
• High Dose methotrexate in Children with Cancer Without Drug Level Monitoring – 133 Cycles Experience
• Prenatal diagnosis in Thalassemia – Prevention is better than cure
• Improving Outcomes in Children with Cancer – Our Experience
• Autologous Stem Cell Transplantation for Myeloma with CKD
• All Megakaryocytic Macrothrombocytopenia Are Not ITP
• Telomeropathies and Our Experience: A Case Series
• Neurology Update – Neurobiology of Sleep
• Journal scan: A review of twelve recent papers of immediate clinical significance, harvested from major international journals
• The Brush Stroke
• A rare case of flood syndrome: a case report of fatal complication of umbilical hernia in liver cirrhosis
• Kauverian eMedical Journal
• COVID-19 and the Change in Perspective: Musings of Two Seasoned Pediatricians
• World Prematurity Day: Reflections of a Neonatologist
• Epilepsy in Kids: Problems Beyond Seizures
• Overcoming Challenges and Performing First Paediatric Allogenic Bone Marrow Transplantation in Trichy
• DX ICD Implanted After Unmasking Brugada – A Case Study
• Kauvery 4th Annual Nursing Conclave N4 – 2021
• Learning from Experience – 13 and 14
• The Consultation Room
• Journal Scan
• Recommended Reading
• Diagnostic Image
• From Sand to Sky
• Transfusion-related acute lung injury
• Equalizing leg length by “lengthening the shorter leg” by surgery: a case report
• VKA induced catastrophic bleeding management with Prothrombin Complex Concentrate (PCC): a practice changer
• Case Report
• Orthopaedics case series
• Morbidity and mortality meetings for improved patient care
• Significance of waist to height ratio as an early predictor in developing metabolic syndrome in children of age group 5-12 years in a tertiary care centre in Trichy: Part IV
• Journal scan: A review of 10 recent papers of immediate clinical significance, harvested from major international journals
• Measuring Association in Case-Control Studies
• DIAGNOSTIC IMAGE
• The Stream of Life
• Let’s prepare for the unexpected guest who always arrives at odd hours: Pre-eclampsia
• Cerebrospinal fluid-cutaneous fistula after neuraxial procedure and management: a case report
• Impella CP assisted recovery of acute COVID 19 fulminant myocarditis presenting as out of hospital cardiac arrest and cardiogenic shock
• Ischemic stroke after Russel’s Viper snake bite, an infrequent event: a case report
• Nutrition needs of preterm babies
• Cervical collar in trauma patients – friend or foe?
• Oxygen conservation strategies
• Chronic periodontitis: a case report
• Erythema multiforme in COVID-19: a case report
• Secondary Synovial Chondromatosis of the knee Joint-a case report
• Statistical Risk Ratio (Relative Risk) Data Analysis
• Journal scan: A review of ten recent papers of immediate clinical significance, harvested from major international journals
• Splinter Haemorrhage
• Dignity matters
• Where does time fly to?
• DIAGNOSTIC IMAGE 1
• Editorial Board
• ABO incompatible renal transplant in a post COVID patient with COVID antibodies
• Neuromyelitis Optica early presentation of an adult disorder
• The gamut of neurological disorders associated with COVID-19
• Anaesthetic management of patients with Takayasu arteritis
• My Pains and Gains in Becoming A Doctor
• Significance testing of correlation coefficient
• While you were sleeping
• Subliminal Sublimes (Sonnet 1)
• Instructions for Authors
• COVID-19 and mucormycosis: the dual threat
• COVID-19 associated mucormycosis: efforts and challenges
• Saccular abdominal aortic aneurysms: a case series
• Trauma and OCD – A Case of a Boy with Dark Fears
• A Patient’s Perception of Pulmonology
• Just a leaf
• Dilemma of shadows
• One-year journey in Kauvery! Challenges in Neuroanaesthesia and Neurointensive care
• Leadless pacemakers: The future of pacing?
• Clinical Therapeutics: The polymyxins, existing challenges and new opportunities
• Decision to Take Up a Patient in The Presence of Arrhythmias
• Why growing public dissatisfaction about medical profession?
• JOURNAL SCAN
• The cloud over a young life
• The Waiting Room
• Author Instruction
• The French Connection!
• Rare cause of pyrexia of unknown origin: Primary gastrointestinal non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma
• Impact of multi-disciplinary tumour board (MDT) on cancer care
• WPW pathway ablated from uncommon location
• Statistical hypothesis – using the t-test
• Learning from Experience – Chapters 6 and 7
• When the sun sets over a good life
• The Deepening Dent
• Save Farmers, Save Future
• Guest Editorial
• Significance of waist to height ratio as an early predictor in developing metabolic syndrome in children of age group 5-12 years in a tertiary care centre in Trichy: Part I
• Journal Club
• Statistical Non Parametric Mann – Whitney U test
• Repurposing anti-rheumatic drugs in COVID
• A Masquerader Vasculitis as Usual: Time Is Tissue
• A Sinister Swelling: A Case Report 
• Statistical Regression Analysis
• Learning from Experience – 11 and 12
• Stained not torn
• Interventional Nephrology
• Amplified Ears and Listening Brains
• Love makes life worth living
• Usage of Dapagliflozin in Elderly
• Severe Methemoglobinemia Treated Successfully with Oral Ascorbic Acid: A Case Report
• The new imitator
• Learning from Experience – Intra Operative, Chapters 17 and 18
• Journal scan
• Recommended Readings
• Evolution of Emergency Medicine in India and the Emergence of the MEM Program at Trichy
• Welcome to the Dance floor: The Emergency Room
• Life of An Emergency Physician
• A Racing Heart Beat: To Shock or Not
• Being Calm Amidst Chaos: Tips on How to Be an Expert Emergency Nurse
• COVID COVID everywhere, but not a place to run away from!
• Proud to be an Emergency Nurse: Life in the fast lane!!!
• The Journey of a Fresher Nurse in the ED
• Ready, Steady, Go!!! A brief on Green Corridor activation in Organ Transplantation
• An Elevator Story!!!
• Veno-occlusive mesenteric ischemia: A case report
• Stridor: An Alarming Sign in Emergency
• Amnesia in the ER: That Ghajini Moment!!! A Case series
• Survival After Paraquat Ingestion: A Case Series
• When you save one life, you save a family
• Severe Methemoglobinemia, Unresponsive to Methylene Blue
• Severe Meliodosis With Multisystemic Involvement: A Case Report
• A Case Report
• Recognize Rhabdomyolysis early to prevent Acute Kidney Injury and Acute Renal Failure
• New Onset Refractory Status Epilepticus (NORSE)
• Sensitive of EFAST in trauma in correlation with CT scan
• Sub Arachnoid Haemorrhage, management in Emergency and Neuro Intensive care
• Uncommon presentation of Takayasu Arteritis as a convulsive syncope
• All right sided hearts are not Dextrocardia
• COVID and the Salt Story
• Acute Lower Limb Ischemia: A Clue to Underlying Aortic Dissection
• Globe Injury with Orbital Blow Out Fracture
• The heat-stricken life – Treatment in time only saves lives!
• Pneumoperitoneum, does it have any clinical significance?
• Hypertensive Emergency in the ED
• Role of a paramedic in inter-hospital transfer
• Golden Hours in Safer Hands
• Through rough, crowded roads and stagnant waters – we race against time to reach you!
• Nana M, et al. Diagnosis and Management of COVID-19 in Pregnancy. BMJ 2022;377:e069739.
• MICS CABG with LIMA and Left Radial artery, harvested by Endoscopic technique: An ultrashort report
• Ultra-Short Case Report
• An interesting case of Bilateral Carotid aneurysms
• Uterine artery embolization: Saving a mother and her motherhood
• Acute Abdomen – Sepsis – CIRCI: A Success Story
• Learning from Experience – Intra Operative, Chapters 19 and 20
• Cardiothoracic surgery in the COVID era: Revisiting the surgical algorithm
• Corona warrior award
• Case Series
• Takotsubo cardiomyopathy
• Learning from Experience – Chapters 3 and 4
• The Consultation Room – Chapters 41 to 45
• Poem from Staff Nurse
• Male V. Menstruation and COVID-19 vaccination
• Efficacy and doses of Ulinastatin in treatment of Covid-19 a single centre study
• Electronic registries in health care
• A case report
• Anaemia in pneumonia: A case report
• Successful treatment of two cases of rare Movement Disorders
• Analysis of variance Two-Way ANOVA
• Learning from Experience – Chapters 5 and 6
• An obituary, farewell to a very dear friend
• ‘Vitamin D’: One vitamin, many claims!
• Implantation of Leadless Pacemaker in a middle-aged patient: An ultra-short case study
• ABO-incompatible renal transplant at ease
• Basal cell adenoma parotid: A case report
• Learning from Experience – Chapters 7 and 8
• Diagnostic Video
• March – the Month for Minds to dwell on Multiple Myeloma
• Covid Report
• Research Protocol
• New Arrows in our Quiver, to direct against SARS-CoV-2 variants
• Out-of-hospital cardiac arrest
• Last on the list: A diagnosis seldom considered in males
• Giant T wave inversion associated with Stokes: Adams syndrome
• Learning from Experience – Intra Operative, Chapters 9 and 10
• Definitions of probability
• A Thanksgiving to Cardiac Surgeons
• Research Article
• Saving the unsavable
• Letters to the Editor
• Learning from Experience – Intra Operative, Chapters 13 and 14
• SIGARAM – The Club for Children with Diabetes
• The hope for a better tomorrow
• An unusual complication of polytrauma:
• An enigma at the ER
• Dynamic examination of airway
• Conditional Probability
• Learning from Experience – Intra Operative, Chapters 15 and 16
• Junior nurses in Kauvery Hospital on the frontline against the COVID-19 pandemic
• Emergency Medicine, the Emerging Specialty: Leading Light on the entrance to the Health Care Pathway
• Battle of two drugs: Who won? – An unusual presentation
• Return of the native and a resurrected foe: A case of Rhinocerebral Mucormycosis
• Covert invader- atypical presentation of neuronal migration disorder
• Fragile heart: an unusual cause of chest pain
• Goldberger’s ECG sign in Left Ventricular Aneurysm
• The Power of Purple
• Beads of Nature’s Rattle
• Modification of Management Strategies, And Innovations, During SARS Cov2 Pandemic Improved the Quality, Criticality and Outcomes in In-Patients “Rising to the occasion”, the mantra for success in the COVID -19 pandemic
• Time in Range (TIR) In Diabetes: A Concept of Control of Glycemia, Whose Time Has Come
• Kauvery Heart Failure Registry- A Concept
• Shorter Course of Remdesivir In Moderate Covid-19 is as Efficacious as Compared to Standard Regime: An Observational Study
• CASE REPORT
• Lymphoepithelial Carcinoma: A Case Report of a Rare Tumour of The Vocal Cord
• Diabetic Keto Acidosis (DKA), Associated with Failed Thrombolysis with Streptokinase in Acute Myocardial Infarction
• EARNING FROM EXPERIENCE – CHAPTERS 1 AND 2
• Notes to Nocturne
• Caring for nobody’s baby
• Special Report
• The curious case of a migrating needle on the chest wall
• Foreign body: A boon at times
• Cardiorenal Syndrome
• What My Grandmother Knew About Dying
• Endovascular Therapy for Acute Stroke with a Large Ischemic Region. N Engl J Med. 2022
• Letter to the Editor
• Clinical outcomes of Coronary Artery Disease in Octogenarians
• Learning from Experience – Intra Operative, Chapters 11 and 12
• Ultrashort Case Report
• Cochlear Implantation: Expanding candidacy and Cost Effectiveness
• Spontaneous Pneumomediastinum in COVID 19 – Tertiary Care Centre Experience in South India
• Amoxycillin Induced Anaphylactic Shock: A Case Report
• An Unusual Cause of Seizures: A Case Report
• Educational Strategies to Promote Clinical Diagnostic Reasoning
• Rheumatic Rarities
• Types of sampling methods in statistics
• Learning from Experience – Intra Operative, Chapters 21 and 22
• Posterior Reversible Encephalopathy Syndrome (PRES)
• Prophylactic orthopaedic surgery
• Subclavian steal: An interesting imaging scenario
• Spondylo-epi-metaphyseal dysplasia (SEMD)
• The bleeding windpipe
• Learning from Experience – Intra Operative, Chapters 23 and 24
• Physician, Protect thyself
• Foetal Medicine, the Future is here!
• Japanese Encephalitis: A common menace
• Carpometacarpal dislocation with impending compartment syndrome
• Heterotopic pregnancy
• Femoral Trochantric and Proximal Humerus Fracture, from Diagnosis to Rehabilitation
• My Father’s Heart Block
• CRT CSP Cases
• Learning from Experience – Intra Operative, Chapters 25 and 26
• Multiple Sclerosis: An overview
• A flower born to blush unseen
• Radio-frequency ablation as an effective treatment strategy in a case of VT storm post STEMI
• Lymphatic malformation of tongue
• Bilateral anterior shoulder dislocation in epilepsy: A case report and review of literature
• An unusual cause of Stridor
• Monoclonal Antibodies (mAbs) – the magic bullets: A review of therapeutic applications and its future perspectives
• Write the Talk
• Press release and Comments
• Probability Distribution of Bernoulli Trials
• Lambda-cyhalothrin and pyrethrin poisoning: A case report
• Good Enough
• The Monoclonal antibodies (mAbs): the beginning
• Comprehensive trauma course 2022: Trauma Management & Kauvery
• Comprehensive trauma course 2022: Introduction to Comprehensive trauma course
• Learning from Experience – Intra Operative, Chapters 27 and 28
• The Brave New World of Anaesthesia
• Anesthetic considerations in Wilson’s disease for fess: A case report
• The painful story behind modern anaesthesia
• Anesthesia considerations for Ankyslosing Spondylitis
• Total intravenous anaesthesia: An overview
• Risk stratification for cardiac patients coming for non-cardiac surgeries
• The Anaesthesiologist’s role in fluoroscopic guided epidural steroid injections for low back pain
• Awake Craniotomy
• Malpositioned central venous catheter: Step wise approach to avoid, identify and manage
• Benefits outweighing risk: Neuraxial anaesthesia in a patient with Spina Bifida with operated Meningomyelocele
• Pain free CABG: newer horizon of minimally invasive cardiothoracic surgery a walk through anaesthesiologist perspective
• Stellate Ganglion Block: A bridge to cervical sympathectomy in refractory Long QT Syndrome
• Venous Malformation in Upper Airway – Anesthetic Challenges and Management: A Case Report
• USG guided peripheral nerve block in surgery for hernia
• Anaesthesia and morbid obesity: A systematic review
• Patient-Controlled Analgesia
• Parapharyngeal abscess of face and neck: Anesthetic management
• 3D TEE, a boon for the diagnosis of Left Atrial Appendage thrombus!
• Anaesthetic management of difficult airway due to retropharyngeal abscess and cervical spondylosis
• Expect the unexpected – Breach in continuous nerve block catheter
• Lignocaine nasal spray: An easy remedy for Post Dural Puncture Headache
• Potassium permanganate poisoning and airway oedema
• Angioedema following anti-snake venom administration
• Ra Fx ablation of Atrioventricular nodal reciprocating tachycardia
• Pace and Ablate Strategy: Conduction system pacing with AV junction ablation for drug refractory atrial arrhythmia – A novel approach
• Why Cardiac Resynchronization Therapy (CRT) For complete heart block? A case discussion
• Pacemakers and Bradyarrhythmias in Diabetic Mellitus
• Outcomes of Total Knee Arthroplasty in patients aged 70 years and above
• An approach to CBC for practitioners
• Acute cerebral sinus venous thrombosis with different presentations and different outcomes: A case series
• Diet and nutritional care for DDLT: A case study
• Vaccine for Dengue (Dengvaxia CYD-TDV)
• Learning from Experience – Intra Operative, Chapters 31 and 32
• காவிரித்தாய்
• ATLAS OF HAEMATOLOGY AND HEMATOONCOLOGY
• Case reports and Case series:
• Usefulness of NEWS 2 score in monitoring patients with cytokine storm of COVID-19 pneumonia
• Treatment approach for extensively Drug-Resistant Tuberculosis (XDR-TB)
• Modified Lichtenstein mesh repair, for a patient of Coronary Artery Disease, Heart Failure and with Implanted Cardioverter- Defibrillator
• Fever-induced Brugada Syndrome
• Pulmonary Thrombo Embolism: When to Thrombolyse?
• Learning from the failure of Nebacumab
• Learning From Experience Intra Operative Chapters 29 and 30
• Heart transplantation: Life beyond the end of life
• Azithromycin to Prevent Sepsis or Death in Women Planning a Vaginal
• Medial retropharyngeal nodal region sparing radiotherapy versus standard radiotherapy
• Proximie: Patient safety in surgery – the urgent need for reform
• Analysis of femoral neck fracture in octogenarians and its management
• Adult Immunisation in Clinical Practice: A Neglected Life Saver
• “Icing” The Eyes
• Doppler vascular mapping in Arterio Venous Fistula (AVF)
• Cosmesis and cure: Radiotherapy in basal cell carcinoma of the dorsum of nose – A case report
• Pulmonary Hypertension and Portal Hypertension
• Comprehensive review of Drug-Induced Cardiotoxicity
• Statistics – Data Collection – Case Study Method
• Atlas of Haematology and Hematooncology
• PRE-OPERATIVE Chapters 1 and 2 – Learning from Experience
• Chapter 2. Uncertainties in medicine in spite of advances
• No Splendid Child
• A Young Girl Lost in the Storm
• ECMO as a bridge to Transplant: A case report
• Renal anemia – from bench to bedside
• Mission Possible
• New kids on the block – Update on diabetic nephropathy therapy
• Infections – Trade off in Transplants
• To Give Or Not to Give – Primer on Bicarbonate Therapy
• Sialendoscopy: Shifting paradigms in treatment of salivary gland disease
• Gait imbalance in a senior due to Chronic Immune Sensory Polyneuropathy (CISP)
• Statistics – Mcnemar Test
• Atlas Of Haematology And Hematooncology
• PRE-OPERATIVE Chapters 3 and 4 – Learning from Experience
• Changing trends a challenge to the already trained
• PREGNANCY POST-RENAL TRANSPLANT
• BALLOON-OCCLUDED RETROGRADE TRANSVENOUS OBLITERATION
• REVERSE SHOULDER ARTHROPLASTY FOR ROTATOR CUFF ARTHROPATHY
• THE AMBUSH A TEAM APPROACH
• ENDOSCOPIC TRANS-SPHENOID APPROACH FOR PITUITARY ADENOMA EXCISION
• A STUDY ON PRESENTATION AND OUTCOME OF BULL GORE INJURIES IN A GROUP OF TERTIARY CARE HOSPITALS
• A CASE OF INTERNUCLEAR OPHTHALMOPARESIS AS THE FIRST MANIFESTATION OF MULTIPLE SCLEROSIS
• GRANULOMATOSIS WITH POLYANGITIS AND LUNG INVOLVMENT (WEGENER’S DISEASE)
• RITUXIMAB (RITUXAN, MABTHERA) IN THE TREATMENT OF B-CELL NON-HODGKIN’S LYMPHOMA
• STATISTICAL SIGNIFICANCE
• PRE-OPERATIVE CHAPTERS 5 AND 6 – LEARNING FROM EXPERIENCE
• Chapter 4: Diagnostic process often reversed
• Journal scan: A review of 25 recent papers of immediate clinical significance, harvested from major international journals
• ஆரோக்கியம் நம் கையில்
• வெற்றியின் பாதை
• Prevalence of vitamin D deficiency in a multi-speciality hospital orthopaedic outpatient clinic
• Esomeprazole induced Hypoglycemia
• Dynamic external fixator for unstable intra articular fractures of Proximal Interphalangeal Joint (PIP): “Suzuki” frame
• How to Practice Academic Medicine and Publish from Developing Countries? A Practical Guide, Springer Nature, 2022
• WINTNCON 2022 – Scientific Program
• Pulmonary Thrombo Embolism: A state of the art review
• Role of Artificial Intelligence in improving EHR/EMR and Medical Coding and billing
• Monoclonal Antibodies: Edrecolomab and Abciximab
• Atlas of haematology and hematooncology
• What doctors must learn: Doctor, look beyond science
• I Whisper Secrets In My Ear
• Mismatched Haploidentical Bone Marrow Transplantation in a 10-year-old boy with relapsed refractory acute lymphoblastic leukemia, at Trichy
• ST-Segment Elevation is not always Myocardial Infarction
• Acyanotic Congenital Heart Disease, repaired, evolves into a Cyanotic Congenital Heart Disease and presents with an atrial tachycardia
• Family medicine – caring for you for the whole of your life. A Lost and Found Art
• The Principles and Practice of Family Medicine
• Complete Heart Block
• Sick Sinus Syndrome (SSS)
• The First Ever National Award Comes to Kauvery Hospital Chennai & Heart City for Safety and Workforce Category in IMC RBNQA Milestone Merits Recognition 2022
• PRE-OPERATIVE CHAPTERS 7 AND 7 – LEARNING FROM EXPERIENCE
• Chapter 5: Super-specialist – boon or bane
• Journal scan: A review of 42 recent papers of immediate clinical significance, harvested from major international journals
• RECOMMENDED READINGS
• நேரம் ஒதுக்கு
• மருத்துவரின் மகத்துவம்
• Surgical Management of Covid-19 Associated Rhino-Orbito-Cerebral-Mucormycosis (Ca-Rocm) – A Single Centre Experience
• Knee Joint Preservation Surgeries
• Guest Editorial Comments
• Ventricular Septal (VSR) closure with ASD device
• Newer Calcium Debulking Angioplasty technique of Orbital Atherectomy
• An hour-long CPR to restart the heart
• VT or SVT with aberrancy?
• Pituitary Neuroendocrine Tumor (PitNET)
• VSD Device Closure
• PDA Device Closure
• Iron Deficiency Anemia, Post MVR
• Torsades de Pointes
• Quality improvement project to Reducing the Malnutrition Rate of ICU patients from 43% to 20%
• Long term use of Amiodarone in Cardiac patients: A Clinical Audit
• Statistical Independent Events and Probability
• PERI-OPERATIVE Chapters 9 and 10 – Learning from Experience
• Journal scan: A review of 40 recent papers of immediate clinical significance, harvested from major international journals
• Kauverian Medical Journal
• First da Vinci Robotic Surgery in Carcinoma Prostate: A Case Report
• Black burden or Taylor the saviour: A case report
• Analysis of differences in Oncology practice between the United Kingdom and India
• A Case of Takayasu Arteritis
• Idiopathic Dilated Pulmonary Artery (IDPA)
• Unusual cause of Dysphagia: A case report
• Tu Youyou: The scientist who discovered artemisinin
• Continuing Nursing Education (CNE) on Risk assessment tools, to assess vulnerable patients at Kauvery Hospital, Tennur
• PRE-OPERATIVE CHAPTERS 11 AND 12 – LEARNING FROM EXPERIENCE
• OLD AND NEW – MAKE THE BEST OF THE TWO
• Journal scan: A review of 30 recent papers of immediate clinical significance, harvested from major international journals
• INSTRUCTION TO AUTHORS
• A pregnant patient with DKA, septic shock and a lactate mystery
• Radical Thymectomy in Myasthenia Gravis through Partial Sternotomy approach: A report on three patients
• In-utero blood transfusion in two etiologically distinct anaemic fetus
• RARE CAUSE OF PULMONARY HYPERTENSION
• Acute Rheumatic fever is still an enigma
• A remarkable journey: Managing LQTS in a 43-year-old female with recurrent syncope and seizure
• An unusual case of Acute Coronary Syndrome
• Reversible cause of severe LV Dysfunction in Left Bundle Branch Block
• A case study on Rhino-Orbital-Cerebro- Mucormycosis
• Snakebite and its management
• Total Elbow arthroplasty in Post Traumatic arthritis
• Wellens Syndrome: An ECG finding not to miss!
• Dr. C.R. Rao Wins Top Statistics Award a look back at his pioneering work
• PRE-OPERATIVE Chapters 13 and 14 – Learning from Experience
• Chapter 7. Doctor-patient relationship
• FROZEN ELEPHANT TRUNK (FET) PROCEDURE IN A 52 YEARS OLD CHRONIC AORTIC DISSECTION PATIENT
• DIAGNOSING AND MANAGING EISENMENGER SYNDROME IN A YOUNG MALE
• STEMI EQUIVALENT BUT STEMI!
• TEMPORARY HEAL CAN POSSIBLY KILL!
• UNDERSTANDING PUBERTY
• THE IMPORTANCE OF STATISTICS IN HEALTHCARE
• JOURNAL SCAN: A REVIEW OF 44 RECENT PAPERS OF IMMEDIATE CLINICAL SIGNIFICANCE, HARVESTED FROM MAJOR INTERNATIONAL JOURNALS
• PRE-OPERATIVE CHAPTERS 15 AND 16 – LEARNING FROM EXPERIENCE
• CHAPTER 8. DOCTOR-DOCTOR RELATIONSHIP
• CLINICAL AUDIT: AN INTRODUCTION
• YOUNG ACS AUDIT
• CLINICAL AUDIT: ANAESTHESIA
• CLINICAL OUTCOME IN ICU PATIENTS
• RATE OF MALIGNANCY IN INDETERMINATE OVARIAN CYST – A PROCESS AUDIT
• PATTERNS OF NEEDLE DISPOSAL AMONG INSULIN USING PATIENTS WITH DIABETES MELLITUS: AN AUDIT
• CONTINUOUS PATIENT MONITORING – LIFE SIGNS
• AGE IS JUST A NUMBER!
• SVT WITH LEFT BUNDLE BRANCH BLOCK FOLLOWING GASTRECTOMY
• COMPLEX AORTIC DISSECTION WITH MULTIFACETED CLINICAL PRESENTATIONS
• POST-OPERATIVE SORE THROAT IN GA: A CONCERN
• NEONATAL HLH: OUR EXPERIENCE
• CLINICAL REVIEW MEET 16TH NOV 2023: CHALLENGES IN SETTING UP A NEW HSCT CENTRE IN A TIER-2 CITY IN INDIA
• CARDIAC BIOMARKERS: CLINICAL UTILITY
• HIRAYAMA DISEASE: A CLINICAL-RADIOLOGICAL REVIEW
• ECG AS A WINDOW OF OPPORTUNITY: FOR HYPERKALEMIA
• EFFECTIVENESS OF ROOD’S APPROACH BASED PAEDIATRIC OCCUPATIONAL THERAPY MANAGEMENT: ON CHILDREN WITH CONGENITAL MUSCULAR TORTICOLLIS
• ELTROMBOPAG, A NOVEL THROMBOPOIETIN (TPO) RECEPTOR AGONIST: AN OVERVIEW
• HENOCH-SCHONLEIN PURPURA
• SUBMANDIBULAR GLAND SIALADENITIS SECONDARY TO SUBMANDIBULAR CALCULUS
• LEAN HOSPITALS
• STATISTICS BLACK-SCHOLES MODEL
• PERI-OPERATIVE CHAPTERS 17 AND 18 – LEARNING FROM EXPERIENCE
• CHAPTER 9. BUILDING BLOCKS OF PATIENT CARE
• JOURNAL SCAN: A REVIEW OF 30 RECENT PAPERS OF IMMEDIATE CLINICAL SIGNIFICANCE, HARVESTED FROM MAJOR INTERNATIONAL JOURNALS
• INSTRUCTIONS TO AUTHORS
• ROTATHON-SERIES OF SUCCESSFUL ROTA CASES LAST 2 MONTHS: AN AUDIT
• OUTCOMES OF AKI AUDIT IN KAUVERY
• ETIOLOGY, CLINICAL CHARACTERISTICS AND OUTCOMES OF PATIENTS WITH ACUTE PANCREATITIS IN KAUVERY CANTONMENT HOSPITAL (KCN), TRICHY
• USE OF BLOOD PRODUCTS AND STEROIDS IN THE MANAGEMENT OF DENGUE AT KAUVERY TRICHY HOSPITALS: A CLINICAL AUDIT
• A CLINICAL AUDIT: ON THE MANAGEMENT OF ECTOPIC PREGNANCY
• DIABETIC KETOACIDOSIS WITH HIGH ANION GAP METABOLIC ACIDOSIS
• HYPOKALEMIC PARALYSIS FROM DISTAL RENAL TUBULAR ACIDOSIS (TYPE-1)
• DELAYED PRESENTATION OF INTERMEDIATE SYNDROME IN A PATIENT WITH ORGANOPHOSPHORUS POISONING: A CASE REPORT
• SCAPULA FRACTURES: DO WE NEED TO FIX THEM?
• SPONTANEOUS CSF RHINORRHEA
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The Key to Understanding How Science Works

How to Give a Great Journal Club Presentation

A lot of advanced science education takes place in the more-or-less formal setting of a journal club where one member of a group presents a paper from the scientific literature to the whole group. giving a good presentation is a learned skill; here are some tips on how to do it well..

• Pick a good paper. (Don’t get all neurotic about this. If you find it interesting and significant, then it will almost certainly benefit your group. If you’re in doubt, ask a colleague or mentor.) Read it. Two or three times. Skimming quickly may be enough to tell you whether or not there is something to it, but getting down to the level of detail that you’ll want to have under control for the actual presentation can easily take more time and effort than you first think it will. Is it clearly written and understandable? If you find it too difficult, or poorly written to get the message, chances are that others will struggle too. You might want to pick a different paper.
• Ask yourself why the authors did the research.  What did they hope to learn?  The abstract and conclusion of a paper generally express the essence of the work.  Read them carefully even before going over the rest of the paper in depth. It often helps you to figure out the big picture, especially when the authors seem to take it for granted that all readers will see what it is. Authors often start off by saying that some subject, X, “is not well-understood.”  Well, of course it’s not!  That’s why they got a paper out of studying X.  The statement usually just gives you a general idea of what the about and is only rarely the level of information that you want.  
• Find the hypothesis in the paper; most have one, but a great many papers that are based on hypotheses don’t say so explicitly (BTW, some authors say they’re testing a “model;” occasionally they are referring to an “animal model” such as a mouse, but usually a model that’s being tested is the same as a hypothesis). 
• The most important thing for your audience is to trace the logical flow of the paper. How do the experiments in the paper test the hypothesis? Is each result truly relevant to the hypothesis: that is, does it support or contradict it, or is it irrelevant to the truth of the hypothesis (this is more common than you might think)? 
• With practice you can make a smooth and informative narrative out of any average paper.  When transitioning from one figure to the next, avoid the trite and deadly-boring phrase “… and then they wanted to look at…” The authors certainly had a reason for “wanting to look at” whatever they looked at. Tell the audience what it was!  Why did they do what the authors did and why that experiment followed at that point.  What did they learn by doing it? 
• Be able to go over the important figures, tables or other displayed items in enough detail to make the main point(s) clear.
• You should understand the methods used by the authors well enough to explain them generally to a group, and say why the authors chose them. You are not expected to become a technical expert in the field represented by the paper, however. Be aware of notable advantages and limitations of the methods in case questions about them arise.
• Try to anticipate the kinds of questions that may come up, but if you can’t answer one, it is perfectly ok to say, “I don’t know.” We’ve all been there.  Maybe someone else in the group does know, in any case an honest statement of ignorance is preferable than trying to fake it. 
• You must be scrupulously fair to the authors, but you are not their advocate; your job is to discuss their paper in a critical and insightful way.  After presenting their reasoning and results as the authors would want them to be presented, feel free to point out shortcomings if you disagree with them or think that they have made a mistake in reasoning, execution, etc..  But be a bit cautious:  if you think that the authors made a bone-headed error, try extra hard to understand what they were doing.  It is possible that they did err somehow, but it is possible that you’ve missed something.  Hopefully, your audience will be engaged and following right along and they will raise critical questions as well. It is important to keep in mind that an attack on the paper is not an attack on you!  Your reputation is not on the line here, the authors’ reputations are.  Of course, if you wind up completely trashing the paper, it may appear that you didn’t follow rule number 1.
• Be aware that you may be the only person in the room who has actually read the paper.  You are the authority on it.  A common mistake is to assume that everyone else already knows full well what you just spent a week learning; after all, they showed up expecting to be enlightened.  There might be one or two experts in the audience, but you should assume that most people aren’t experts. And even experts are rarely offended by hearing a concise review of the basics: they know full well that the audience needs it. So don’t assume too much and do give enough detail. Your main task is to educate your colleagues about a piece of work that you think is interesting and valuable.  
• Plan to finalize your talk at least a day or so in advance. Practice going through the slides out loud (ideally with a couple of friends), indicating the major points of each one, but do not try to memorize or read your talk! It’s nice to know your transition to the next slide, but if you forget it, don’t panic – just advance the slide and pick up from there. (Some people like to have a card with a few notes on it as a security blanket in case of a public brain freeze.  Ordinarily, having a card handy is enough to guarantee that they won’t need it.)
• On the day of the talk show up early, get into the room, get your presentation loaded. and flip through the slides in advance.  Every experienced presenter has nightmare stories of last minute computer crashes, software incompatibilities, missing pointers, unfamiliar set-ups. These problems are not fun, and not what you want to have to cope with after you’ve been introduced. If you find a glitch during your run-through, you’ll have time to fix it.

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I have encouraged students to study Brad’s tips on giving a great journal club presentation for 20 years. I plan to continue doing so!

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Some departments have journal clubs where everyone takes turns to give a short presentation on a relevant topic or paper. There are numerous books on how to give a presentation, but little advice available on how to choose a good topic or paper. Here are some suggestions.

Consider what you want to achieve with your presentation: do you want to teach, amuse, provoke, or just impress your colleagues? Choose a paper accordingly.

Picking a subject outside your specialty will broaden horizons. Ask colleagues and friends in departments that your specialty is cooperating with about their “hot papers.”

If you have done research, why not boost your image and present the paper? Tell people something other than what they can just read in it, like how you got involved in the particular project, and then briefly outline methods and results. Please constrain yourself—a common mistake is giving too many details and talking for too long.

Try to cross the species-barrier. Veterinarians have developed some unique solutions in all fields of medicine to treat their diverse group of patients. Be inspired.

All doctors have been taught physiology or anatomy but it might be a while back. Updates on basic science subjects are always relevant.

For perspective on daily life routines, try finding a paper on the history of your specialty.

For amusement try the Annals of Improbable Research ( www.improbable.com ) or the Christmas editions of the BMJ .

If you are nervous about giving presentations, choosing an unconventional topic or paper for your talk could actually help you—people will notice what you are saying more than how you are saying it.

Avoid presenting papers on the tautologies and well established routines of your specialty. Only go there if you can present a new paper that contradicts old truths.

Don't think of presenting a paper as just something you have to do. It's your chance to address colleagues without interruption—how often does that happen? ■

5 Tips for Journal Club First-Timers

By Lucy Bauer

Monday, March 30, 2015

Research communities often uphold the ideal of scientific collaboration. But what does “collaboration” really mean? The picture that comes to mind can be people sitting, talking, and exchanging ideas that push toward the goal of creating better health. How can this exchange practically happen? One way is through a journal club. Recently, I had the privilege of presenting a journal article to my lab group’s journal club in the PAIN (Pain And Integrative Neuroscience) lab for  Dr. Catherine Bushnell . One goal of our lab is to look at the relationship and differences between itch and pain.

Me explaining part of the spinal neuron pathway in itch

So, what is the purpose of a journal club?

A journal club is a regular gathering of scientists to discuss a scientific paper found in a research journal. One or two members of the club present a summary of the chosen paper that the whole group has read. Then, the discussion begins. Attendees ask clarifying questions, inquire about different aspects of the experimental design, critique the methods, and bring a healthy amount of skepticism (or praise) to the results.

For my first journal club at the NIH, we considered a paper that looks at how itch is mediated in the spinal cord from the skin up to the brain. The authors show that mice lacking a gene for a specific type of spinal neuron constantly scratch specific areas of their bodies corresponding to the missing spinal interneuron. When these mice receive a stem cell implant, a normal reaction to itch is restored. This paper generated much discussion about neuronal development, ethical considerations, and how the results relate to our research within the National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health (NCCIH).

The ideas found and discussed at the journal club can help expand and balance each scientist’s scope of what is happening in the world of research while informing experimental plans and research directions. Here are five things I learned from my experience leading a journal club that can help you prepare to get the most out of your discussions:

1. Know the background material.

Prepare beforehand for your journal club presentation by knowing the research that has preceded and is related to the paper you will be presenting. This will make your discussion more informed and effective. Of course, it is likely impossible to know everything that would relate to your journal club presentation, but even a little bit of background information is helpful.

2. Make your presentation concise.

Every paper has many details about methods, results, discussion, future directions, etc. It is very helpful to give your audience the general flow of the entire paper and research before adding in all the details.

3. Simplify unfamiliar concepts.

Journal clubs often have members of varying backgrounds. Hence, not all concepts will be familiar to everyone in the group. It can be helpful to give a short summary of techniques and results. Detailed explanations can be provided later on, because the primary focus of presenting the paper should be giving an overview of the research.

4. Ask yourself questions about the paper before you present.

As the presenter, you may be the semi-“expert” on the paper, but as you get to know the research, you may discover some questions you have about the methods. Share with the group the questions you came across yourself and any answers you may have found to address them.

5. Ask specific questions to the members of the journal club.

When entering into discussion time, ask the group for their thoughts on specific topics found in the paper to create a starting point for conversation about the paper. Questions can be about methods, results, general ideas, and much more!

Journal clubs are great forums for the exchange of thoughts and ideas. Clubs held at the NIH are just one way through which necessary scientific discussion and collaboration can take place. Be sure to look into journal clubs happening near you!

If you’re at the NIH, the Office of Intramural Training and Education (OITE) hosts  Summer Journal Clubs  that are ideal for trainees just getting their feet wet. And for our colleagues around the world, the NIH National Library of Medicine (NLM) provides an online platform to discuss journal articles in our connected world via the  PubMed Commons Journal Clubs .

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How to Make a “Good” Presentation “Great”

• Guy Kawasaki

Remember: Less is more.

A strong presentation is so much more than information pasted onto a series of slides with fancy backgrounds. Whether you’re pitching an idea, reporting market research, or sharing something else, a great presentation can give you a competitive advantage, and be a powerful tool when aiming to persuade, educate, or inspire others. Here are some unique elements that make a presentation stand out.

• Fonts: Sans Serif fonts such as Helvetica or Arial are preferred for their clean lines, which make them easy to digest at various sizes and distances. Limit the number of font styles to two: one for headings and another for body text, to avoid visual confusion or distractions.
• Colors: Colors can evoke emotions and highlight critical points, but their overuse can lead to a cluttered and confusing presentation. A limited palette of two to three main colors, complemented by a simple background, can help you draw attention to key elements without overwhelming the audience.
• Pictures: Pictures can communicate complex ideas quickly and memorably but choosing the right images is key. Images or pictures should be big (perhaps 20-25% of the page), bold, and have a clear purpose that complements the slide’s text.
• Layout: Don’t overcrowd your slides with too much information. When in doubt, adhere to the principle of simplicity, and aim for a clean and uncluttered layout with plenty of white space around text and images. Think phrases and bullets, not sentences.

As an intern or early career professional, chances are that you’ll be tasked with making or giving a presentation in the near future. Whether you’re pitching an idea, reporting market research, or sharing something else, a great presentation can give you a competitive advantage, and be a powerful tool when aiming to persuade, educate, or inspire others.

• Guy Kawasaki is the chief evangelist at Canva and was the former chief evangelist at Apple. Guy is the author of 16 books including Think Remarkable : 9 Paths to Transform Your Life and Make a Difference.

Partner Center

120 Presentation Topic Ideas Help You Hook Your Audience

Updated: January 15, 2024

Published: August 09, 2023

Cooking is easy. The puzzle is figuring out what to eat. As soon as you know that, you can get started. The same holds for presentations. The sooner you can whip up a good, informative, and catchy topic, the easier the rest of the process becomes.

Pick a good topic that resonates with you and your audience to set a strong foundation. But select the wrong topic, and it becomes difficult to connect with your audience, find mutual interests, or hold their attention.

So, let’s learn how to develop thought-provoking and relevant topics for your presentations. You’ll also find some best practices to make your presentation memorable.

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Table of Contents

How to Choose a Great Presentation Topic in 5 Steps

120 presentation topic ideas, 5 presentation tips.

4. Choose an appropriate presentation style.

There are many ways to present a topic. Your personality, the topic at hand, and your audience’s personas will help you determine which style would best fit you and your audience.

Select a presentation style that will communicate the main idea clearly and have a lasting impact on your audience.

For instance, explore a freeform style presenter by Sir Ken Robinson.

5. Engage with your audience.

Work on your presentation skills to make a strong connection with your audience, get through to them and leave a mark.

Think of the presenter as the link between the topic and the audience. A strong or a weak presenter can make a difference between a presentation being a thriving success or a boring failure.

Hone your skills by engaging and interacting with your audience. Make them feel like a part of the presentation and not just spectators. 70% of marketers have found presentations with interactive content to be more effective than those without.

Here are a few ways you can make your presentation interactive:

• Start your speech with uncommon questions to your audience. Involve them from the get-go, like ask to raise their hands if X.
• Make eye contact to build credibility and show confidence. Don’t stare at your slides or notes. Smile occasionally and talk to the audience directly.
• Have an active and confident body language. Don’t stand in the same place the entire time. Move around the stage.
• Don’t be monotonous. Speak as you would to a colleague — with enthusiasm.
• Ask close-ended questions in between to keep the audience engaged without losing time. Address them using their names to keep things interesting.
• Share personal experiences and stories that your audience will find fascinating and relatable.
• Practice thoroughly before you present so you’re fluent with the material and delivery.
• Energy and excitement can be quite contagious. Make sure you exude enough to spread some to your audience.

Feeling Inspired Yet?

Now you have all the right ingredients for choosing amazing topics and a hundred ideas to drive inspiration from. So, go ahead and start cooking presentations that will blow your audience away.

Don’t forget to choose a super-relevant topic and add meaty information. Do it with excitement to make it enjoyable for you and your audience. Best of luck!

Don't forget to share this post!

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Hot topics and trends in cardiovascular research

1 Department of Cardiovascular Sciences, KU Leuven, Campus Gasthuisberg O/N1 704, Herestraat 49, Leuven, Belgium

2 ECOOM, Department of Managerial Economics, Strategy and Innovation, KU Leuven, Naamsestraat 61, Leuven, Belgium

Wolfgang Glänzel

3 Department Science Policy & Scientometrics, Library of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Arany János u. 1, Budapest, Hungary

Karin R Sipido

Associated data.

Comprehensive data on research undertaken in cardiovascular medicine can inform the scientific community and can support policy building. We used the publication output from 2004 to 2013 and the 2014 references to these documents, to identify research topics and trends in the field of cardiovascular disease.

Methods and results

Text fragments were extracted from the titles and abstracts of 478 000 publications using natural language processing. Through machine-learning algorithms, these text fragments combined to identify specific topics across all publications. A second method, which included cross-references, assigned each publication document to a specific cluster. Experts named the topics and document clusters based on various outputs from these semi-automatic methods. We identified and labelled 175 cardiovascular topics and 20 large document clusters, with concordance between the approaches. Overarching, strongly growing topics in clinical and population sciences are evidence-based guidance for treatment, research on outcomes, prognosis, and risk factors. ‘Hot’ topics include novel treatments in valve disease and in coronary artery disease, and imaging. Basic research decreases its share over time but sees substantial growth of research on stem cells and tissue engineering, as well as in translational research. Inflammation, biomarkers, metabolic syndrome, obesity, and lipids are hot topics across population, clinical and basic research, supporting integration across the cardiovascular field.

Growth in clinical and population research emphasizes improving patient outcomes through novel treatments, risk stratification, and prevention. Translation and innovation redefine basic research in cardiovascular disease. Medical need, funding and publishing policies, and scientific opportunities are potential drivers for these evolutions.

Introduction

Current policies for public funding of health research increasingly focus on innovation, with a final goal to improve health outcomes. 1 To support policies, roadmaps are established, for example for diabetes 2 and respiratory 3 diseases. In the USA, the joint Academies developed a document to guide national policy in health 4 with a dedicated document for cardiovascular medicine 5 that includes general directions for research. In Europe, building a roadmap for cardiovascular research is one of the tasks of the ERA-CVD network. 6 Expert opinion guides the exercise but a macro and global-level overview of past cardiovascular research can enrich the debate and strengthen the basis for recommendations. The breadth of cardiovascular research is astounding, 7 with research undertaken across a variety of institutions and with each piece of research having its own scope/focus or topic. It is thus challenging to review and summarize all the research that has been undertaken.

Identifying all the relevant research is the first hurdle to overcome, then classifying or identifying topics of research is the next significant hurdle. Journal classification systems offer little assistance, as they are not granular enough to identify more specific topics within broader fields. Thesauri or medical dictionaries, such as PubMed or the International Classification of Diseases (ICD), do not offer an overview of time-dependent changes in topics or changing concepts.

Identifying key topics using semi-automatic approaches based on text analysis is an alternative solution that takes advantage of recent developments in high-level informatics. As this is not reliant on a predefined classification, it may result in different outcomes. Various methods use natural language processing (NLP) to extract topics or clusters from text. For example, the bibliometric community has compared the results when varying methods are applied to a set of astronomy publications, focusing on the importance having topic expert input throughout the process. 8 The recent CardioScape project analysed abstracts of 2476 research projects awarded 2010–12 as published by funding bodies. The authors assigned research project to topics, based on the abstract text, using a semi-automatic process that tested and trained the data to more quickly allocate abstracts to a topic than depending solely on expert review. They produced a detailed taxonomy or classification of cardiovascular research based on the list of topics of the European Society of Cardiology, creating a hierarchical list of over 600 topics. 9

Here, we aim to identify topics in published cardiovascular research and their evolution between 2004 and 2013, assessing whether they have appeared, disappeared, or changed over time. In a comprehensive approach, we use a combination of existing methods for text mining, network analysis, and clustering, and further develop these tools to handle a large dataset of >400 000 publications.

In our study, we use two different and complementary approaches. A first one detects topics across the collection of publications, counting number of documents, and relations between topics. A second one maps document networks into clusters with an identifiable subject of research. These approaches are described here in brief, with more detail provided in the Supplementary material online .

Data sources

The dataset includes the reference, abstract, address, and citation data for 478 006 cardiovascular publications from 2004 to 2013, including 2014 references to these documents, using an expert informed search strategy and references to core cardiovascular journals, as previously published. 7 The documents span across >5000 journals, and include cardiovascular publications in leading general journals in medical and life sciences ( Supplementary material online , Table S1 ). We obtained the data from Clarivate Analytics Web of Science Core Collection (WoS) through a custom data license held by ECOOM, KU Leuven.

Text pre-processing

We took all titles and abstracts of the above publications, and extracted the noun phrases (text fragments of various lengths) using the NLP framework developed at Stanford. 10 Supplementary material online , Figure S1 illustrates the subsequent data flow for the analysis.

Topic modelling

For this approach, we applied latent Dirichlet allocation (LDA) 11 to the above-mentioned text fragments from the titles and abstracts of all publications. This LDA approach groups the text fragments to identify topics and allocates documents to topics. In this approach, a document contributes to several topics. Of note, general terms or terms that are used frequently across the majority of documents are filtered out as part of the methodology, resulting in groups of highly specific text fragments and, consequently, topics, as illustrated in Supplementary material online , Figure S2 .

At least three cardiovascular experts (listed in the Acknowledgements section) named each topic based on a set of the top 40 text fragments representing a topic. Further rounds of cross-review validated and consolidated the naming process. A final review of all topics ensured naming consistency across the topics and allowed for additional expert-based classification as clinical, basic, or population research.

We then calculated the number of documents that contributed to a topic, using probability analysis in LDA. Furthermore, we calculated the co-occurrence of topics in the publications, and visualized the outcome of this network analysis using VOSViewer ( www.vosviewer.com ). 12

Document clustering

For this second approach, the dataset was reduced to two periods, and we analysed the cardiovascular publications from 2006 to 2008 and those from 2011 to 2013, separately. For each time period, we then calculated the similarities between documents based on the noun phrase text fragments from the titles and abstracts of all publications and based on the references in these publications, using adapted cosine calculations and a hybrid document clustering algorithm, as previously described. 13 We then applied the Louvain 14 community detection algorithm to identify clusters of similar documents. For this method, each document is only located in one cluster. Subsequently, we applied the DrL/OpenOrd algorithm 15 to map and visualize the documents and clusters. We used R 16 in a high-powered cloud-based parallelized computing environment for all operations.

We identified and described the core documents, 13 the most common text fragments, as well as, the most highly cited documents and the most productive authors in each cluster, to name the clusters. For each document cluster, we identified the most highly representative topics from the LDA topic model.

Evolution of cardiovascular topics—trends and ‘hot’ topics

We identified 175 topics, listed alphabetically in Supplementary material online , Table S2 . This list groups specific topics within areas such as atherosclerosis, coronary artery disease, arrhythmias, heart failure, and their evolution over time.

For a visual and comprehensive overview, we prepared a map of the topics and their interrelation, based on co-occurrence within publications using a network analysis ( Figure ​ Figure1 1 A ). This map identifies different categories of research: population (at the top, blue), clinical (left, green/yellow), and basic research (right, red). Large topics in each category define overarching interests such as Evidence-guided-treatment and Outcomes and prognosis in clinical research, and Epidemiology of CVD and risk factors in population research, topics that have seen large growth in numbers of publications since 2004 ( Figure ​ Figure1 1 B ). Cell signalling and gene transcription is a central topic for basic research, with modest growth ( Figure ​ Figure1 1 B ).

Main areas and organization of research focus. ( A ) Visual presentation of the topics in 2013 and how they relate to each other, based on how often the topics are included in the same publication. Each circle represents one topic and each group of topics is highlighted in a separate colour; the most similar documents and clusters are located closer to each other based on VOSviewer mapping. ( B ) Evolution of overarching topics.

More focused ‘hot’ topics that experienced a large growth in number of publications are presented in Figure  2 .

Topics with large growth. For population research, the eight topics that increased more than two-fold in volume are shown; for clinical research, 27 topics increased more than two-fold and 10 of these are presented; for basic research only two topics had more than a two-fold increase, and the top 8 growers are presented. Overarching topics are shown in Figure ​ Figure1 1 B .

In population research, risk factors with research on metabolic syndrome, lipids, diabetes, physical activity, and mental health are prominent. In clinical research, patient management after myocardial infarction (MI) and outside the hospital are leading topics, but the true ‘hot’ topic was aortic valve disease that saw a surge of interest, related to transaortic valve repair, starting 2008. Though still small in numbers, heart failure research and stem cells saw substantial growth. This last clinical topic complements the major hot topics in basic research, on stem cells and cardiac repair and tissue engineering. In basic research, increasing translational output in metabolic syndrome and diabetes use mostly mouse models. Focused topics are organelle studies on mitochondria and endoplasmic reticulum.

Table  1 complements the fast growing topics of Figure  2 with additional leading 2013 topics. Most of these also have grown since 2004, but two topics, even if large, seem to have lost momentum, i.e. longitudinal studies on blood pressure, and basic research in cardiac electrophysiology.

Large topics in 2013

PCOS, polycystic ovary syndrome.

Only four topics in clinical, and none in population research, saw a decrease, whereas seven topics in basic research saw a decline in output ( Figure ​ Figure3 3 A ). Across all topics, the growth in publication output, measured as the number of documents in 2013 divided by the number of documents in 2004, was significantly larger in clinical and population research topics than in basic research topics ( Figure ​ Figure3 3 B ).

Unequal growth of research output across categories. ( A ) Topics that saw a decrease of >5%, i.e. 4/102 clinical and 7/50 basic research topics. ( B ) Average growth in each category. Each dot presents a topic; the values are the fractional growth, i.e. the number of documents in 2013 divided by the number of documents in 2004. Kruskal–Wallis followed by Dunn’s test for multiple comparisons; *** P < 0.0001 basic vs. clinical and vs. population.

When considering the overall output and growth of publications across the categories of population, clinical and basic research, the data suggest that the share of basic research publications is declining.

Document clusters define large research areas and trends

The size of topics represents the activity within each of these—documents contribute to more than one topic. In a complementary approach, we examined how documents group together based on the similarity of their text and of their references, whereby each document can belong to one cluster only, effectively dividing the total publication output into different areas. The hybrid clustering algorithm was applied to two datasets, i.e. the publications from 2006 to 2008 and 2011 to 2013.

In each period, 10 large clusters emerged, accounting for >90% of all documents.

To identify trends, we compare the two periods and examine the evolution over time ( Figure  4 ). In the graph legends, emerging areas are marked by green triangle, decreasing ones with a red triangle. Risk scoring in the population and related patient management are the leading areas, growing over time (top position). In 2011–13, a large cluster emerges that relates to gene and stem-cell therapy, including research on inducible pluripotent stem cells. Documents within this cluster include research on ischaemic heart disease and arrhythmias. Haemodynamics and biomechanics are another emerging area that includes documents on atherosclerosis and vascular diseases such as aneurysms, but also heart failure and assist devices. Aortic valve disease is a newly defined area in 2011–13. Imaging also becomes very prominent as an area in its own right. Whereas in 2006–08, hypertension was a defined area, this is no longer identifiable in 2011–13.

Distribution of document clusters in 2006–08 and in 2011–13. ( A ) In 2006–08, the 10 largest clusters represent 93% of the total publication output in this period. ( B ) In 2011–13, the 10 largest clusters represent 92% of the total publication output in this period. The colour codes for similar clusters are maintained across the periods. However, some clusters are present in only one period. The clusters are arranged by size, reading clockwise from the top, and the legends arranged accordingly. Red triangles mark clusters that disappeared and green triangles emerging clusters.

For the last period, we also examined the structure and interrelation of clusters, using a graphical rendering, giving insight in the size, composition, and presence of subclusters ( Figure  5 ).

Document clusters’ map 2011–13. A visual presentation of documents in clusters and subclusters: the most similar documents and clusters are located closer to each other, based on the DrL two-dimensional mapping layout technique.

In this force-directed DrL graph layout, the documents and clusters are mapped to minimize the distance between the most similar documents and maximize the distance between non-linked documents. This produces a two-dimensional co-ordinate layout where the documents closest to each other share the most similarities since they share common text fragments and references. Conversely, documents and clusters on the edges of the graph have the least similarity to other documents or clusters.

Cluster 2 on gene and stem cells is dense and separate, yet touches and interacts with Cluster 5 [acute coronary syndrome (ACS) and MI]. Cluster 9 on imaging is spread out in subclusters at different locations, including one near Cluster 5 (ACS and MI), and one near Cluster 4 (heart failure). Cluster 8 (arrhythmias) is also split with one part closer to heart failure, another to anticoagulation and atrial fibrillation.

Further naming the subclusters is presently beyond reach, as it would require a lot of expert input and resources. However, linking the clusters and the topics adds granularity to the larger research areas and provides internal methodological validation of the cluster naming.

Table  2 presents the most highly associated topics in the ten largest document clusters in each period. Overall, agreement with the LDA topics is high and provides more detail on the research contained in the clusters. E.g., the cluster ‘Haemodynamics’ is now showing different areas of focus, i.e. in congenital disease, aortic, and valvular diseases; the topic ‘Arrhythmias’ is more populated with device research in the second time period compared to the first.

Cluster names and topics present within clusters

AF, atrial fibrillation; ANS, autonomic nervous system; BP, blood pressure; CABG, coronary artery bypass grafting; CRT, cardiac resynchronization therapy; CT, computed tomography; CV, cardiovascular; DES, drug-eluting stent; ECG, electrocardiogram; HF, heart failure; LV, left ventricular; NOAC, new oral anticoagulant; PTCI, percutaneous transluminal coronary intervention; RV, right ventricle; STEMI, ST elevated myocardial infarction.

The method for identification of topics in cardiovascular publication output allowed the visualization and evaluation of trends in cardiovascular research. Over a 10-year period significant shifts occur.

Identification of cardiovascular research topics through natural language processing

In cardiovascular research, topics are generally predefined in a taxonomy that can be hierarchical and/or matrix structured. The CardioScape project approach (see Introduction section) was well suited to its purpose of the analysis of 2476 project abstracts in a single time period and using an existing taxonomy has the advantage of recognizable areas of research. The bottom-up approach used here lent itself well to analysis of much larger numbers of documents and generated a topic list that represents the interests from the community during the period under study.

A recent study by the WHO working to identify cardiovascular disease research output from random sets of publications from PubMed required a significant amount of expert-based review of only a small proportion of the published articles. 17 The current approach was more comprehensive in coverage of the field, but despite reliance on advanced automated analysis, experts still had an important role in interpreting and linking concepts to validate the results.

In the current naming of topics and clusters, experts frequently used terms that connect to a classic hierarchical list in the field, including major diseases, and recognizing clinical, population, and basic discovery research. Nevertheless, the approach uncovered specific emerging areas of research such as transcatheter aortic valve implantation (TAVI), topics consistent with broad trends, such as risk stratification and evidence-based guidance, and innovation (gene and stem cell research). Some of these terms would not appear in a classic taxonomy and thus the NLP approach offers novel insights.

The present study was not attempting to classify all research but to capture and identify the most common and evolving topics over time in the cardiovascular field by using a comprehensive set of cardiovascular publications across some 5000 journals.

Emphasis on improving clinical care and risk assessment

The most represented and fast growing topics across the documents are evidence-based guidance for treatment and research on outcomes and prognosis. These result underscore the attention given to guidelines and evidence based medicine (EBM). 18–23 Part of this research is likely to represent the large number of clinical trials taking place in the cardiovascular field, 24 which over time have had a significant effect on the reduction of mortality from CVD due to establishing the effectiveness and safety of a number of drugs and medical interventions in cardiovascular disease. 25 The presence of policy related topics, such as the topics on quality of care and health economics likewise supports the focus on implementation research and a shift of focus from reducing acute mortality to care in chronic disease.

Growth of research on risk factors emphasizes the importance of preventative medicine, evident in both the topics analysis and the document cluster analysis. However, some specific blood pressure studies declined over time, perhaps reflecting the change in focus on the single risk factor of ‘blood pressure’ to a multivariable spectrum and newly identified risk factors. We have also previously shown that hypertension has moved more closely to clinical cardiovascular research over time. 26

Smaller topics illustrate crosstalk with non-cardiovascular diseases, because of shared risk factors or common methods used in research or occurrence of cardiovascular complications. The latter is particularly evident in two topics that focus on cardiovascular complications in pregnancy and in cancer.

Innovation and translation in clinical and basic science

Major diseases such as ischaemic heart disease and arrhythmias, remain present over time but shifts can be seen. There is for example, a larger focus on atrial fibrillation, in particular embolic risk, on novel treatments, such as stem cells in heart failure, and transcatheter aortic valve interventions as a dominant element within the topic of valvular heart disease. 19 Imaging is present in several topics but emerges as a cluster in its own right in the document analysis. Many of these changes are driven by technological innovation and translation.

Basic research as a whole saw its share decline, but with interesting shifts in content. Although the topic analysis and mapping identifies basic research topics as a category, there are complementarities across categories. Stem cell research, tissue engineering, and biomechanical factors saw rapid growth and are also present in clinical topics. This also applies to inflammation and diabetes. Animal models for disease are rapidly growing topics consistent with growth of translational research.

An analysis of the countries of authorship of the publications in the emerging clusters of discovery research shows that the USA leads in the number and share of publications (30%+), followed mostly by Germany, or the UK or Italy. However, for the large document cluster on genes and stem cells in 2011–13, the second most productive country is China, contributing 17.5% of the publications in this cluster (Supplementary material online, Figure S3 ).

Interestingly, inflammation, biomarkers, metabolic syndrome, obesity, and lipids are hot topics with growing research output in population, clinical and basic research, indicating integration and crosstalk across the spectrum of cardiovascular research.

Drivers of change

Technology and opportunity-driven scientific interest, but also strategic choices and funding policies are likely to influence trends in research. CardioScape studied public and charity funding in the years 2010–12 and describes major investments in clinical research. Yet the share of publication output globally for clinical research appears to be substantially larger than the share of funding for clinical research reported in CardioScape. This could be explained by clinical research funded by other sources, such as industry or local funding, which are not included in the CardioScape analysis. Also, the present data represent global output. Major research investments in China, and the emphasis on clinical research in the USA, can contribute to some of the global trends.

The slower growth in basic science could reflect a slower growth in investment. This can be absolute or relative towards the increasing costs of advanced research methodology. Another reason could be editorial pressure for more comprehensive papers that may reduce quantity to the benefit of rich content in individual papers.

Finally, growing translational research may blur the boundaries between basic and clinical research and lead to an apparent slower growth in discovery research.

Policy perspectives

Policy development is a forward looking exercise. In health research, medical needs identified by health data and expert opinion, are an important consideration. 27 Past research output helps to identify areas that may need more investment. Research funders also use input from society. 28 When assessing current priorities in cardiovascular research for the Dutch 28 and British 29 Heart Foundations we can see that research into heart failure and arrhythmias are common across their top priorities. Focus on healthy lifestyles is a top priority in the Dutch Heart Foundation as well as in the US vision and strategic agenda. 4 , 5 At the macro-level, the data presented here indicate that some of the main issues presented in these research agendas are actively pursued but others less so.

Study limitations

Limitations of studying research topics have been addressed in the bibliometric field. 8 The reliance of expert input is a limitation and potential source of bias that we tried to minimize by using mixed panels.

The current approach was not sufficiently granular to extract recent emerging topics that contain a limited number of documents. In addition, publication output is somewhat delayed vs. actual research and experts may be aware of ongoing research with still limited output. In this case, the method and dataset can be used to interrogate about specific developments (see Supplementary material online , Table S3 for data on micro-RNA and personalized medicine).

As the data set ends in 2013, very recent developments are not covered. This relates to the methodological complexity. Web of Science data including 2014 references were available mid-2015, the cardiovascular publications dataset was complete in 2016 and algorithms for analysis including re-iterative expert review required another 18 months. A similar time lag is seen in other studies that rely on data mining and processing. 9 Congress abstracts could be considered as a source to identify emerging topics but have several limitations. They are of a different nature than papers and the scope of a congress shapes content of selected abstracts. We provide a complementary survey of 3000 abstracts from the 2018 congress of the European Society of Cardiology, illustrating the strong presence of clinical research at this event, within the topics of Clusters 1 and 3–7 of Table  2 ( Supplementary material online , Figure S4 ). Two emerging topics were cardio-oncology and digital health, each representing however <25 abstracts.

In the present analysis, quality and impact of studies in a particular domain were not evaluated, though highly cited papers were part of the cluster identification. In their analysis of poorly cited papers covering 165 000 papers in 1997–2008, Ranasinghe et al . 30 noted the highest percentage of poorly cited papers in the clinical and population research category. Nevertheless, as they and others 31 have noted, citations are not the only parameter to assess impact, in particular in clinical medicine.

Conclusions

Identification of leading research topics and trends illustrates the emphasis on improving clinical medicine, and the growing interest in risk stratification and preventive medicine. Translation and innovation redefine cardiovascular research. Linking the present data with the insights of the professional community and of funders and society, may contribute to the building of a future research roadmap.

Supplementary Material

Ehz282_supplementary_data, acknowledgements.

The authors thank to the following experts for their review of the text fragments and input into the names of the topics: Dr Matthew Amoni, Dr Peter Haemers, Prof Sian Harding, Dr Frederik Helsen, Prof Gerd Heusch, Prof Tatiana Kuznetsova, Prof Tobias Op‘t Hof, Prof Frank Rademakers, Dr Sander Trenson, Dr Bert Vandenberk, and Dr Maarten Vanhaverbeke.

D.G. had a PhD Fellowship through KU Leuven.

Conflict of interest: K.R.S. is Past Editor-in-Chief of Cardiovascular Research (2013–17). W.G. is Editor-in-Chief of Scientometrics .

Paediatrics : Articles on Journal Club Topics

• Articles on Journal Club Topics
• High Flow Oxygen
• High-Flow Nasal Cannula and Aerosolized β Agonists for Rescue Therapy in Children With Bronchiolitis: A Case Series
• March 2016 - Critical Appraisal Case Series
• Acute Rheumatic Fever
• Article - Mothers' knowledge about acute rheumatic fever
• Presentation - April 2013
• Medication Safety
• Article - Challenges of safe medication practice in paediatric care - a nursing perspective
• Presentation - August 2014
• Bedside Handover
• Article - Bedside Handover Enhances Completion of Nursing Care and Documentation
• Presentation - August 2013
• Bronchiolitis
• Article - A Single Dose of Azithromycin Does Not Improve Clinical Outcomes of Children Hospitalised with Bronchiolitis: A Randomised, Placebo-Controlled Trial
• Presentation - October 2014
• Falls in Hospital

The first article was discussed at Journal Club with the other articles extra reading on the topic

• Article - The Epidemiology of Falls in Hospitalizes Children
• CASP Critical Appraisal Tool for Cohort Studies
• Article - Exploring and Evaluating Five Paediatric Falls Assessment Instruments
• Challenges and Conundrums in the Validation of Pediatric Fall Risk Assessment Tools
• RCH Melbourne: Falls Prevention Guideline

Quality of Life and Adolescents

• Article - Individual Quality of Life Among at Risk Indigenous Youth in Australia
• Presentation - March 2014

Paediatric Nurses' Journal Club

This month's topic - high flow oxygen.

EMLA Cream/heat and venous cannulation

• Article - Atraumatic care: EMLA cream and application of heat to facilitate peripheral venous cannulation in children
• Presentation - July 2014
• Fasting times on Paediatric Wards
• Article - Are you hungry? Are you thirsty?--fasting times in elective outpatient pediatric patients
• Presentation - June 2014
• Nasogastric Tube Placement
• Article - Development of a clinical practice guideline for testing nasogastric tube placement
• Central Line Sepsis Prevention
• Article - Continuous passive disinfection of catheter hubs prevents contamination and bloodstream infection
• Presentation - May 2014
• Oral Sucrose for Procedural Pain
• Article - Sucrose decreases infant biobehavioral pain response to immunizations: a randomized controlled trial
• Rapid Critical Appraisal of an RCT
• Paediatric Gastroenteritis
• Article - Bolus fluid therapy and sodium homeostasis in paediatric gastroenteritis
• Presentation - May 2013
• Paediatric Pain
• Article - Relationship Between Knowledge, Attitudes, and Self-Efficacy of Nurses In the Management of Pediatric Pain

Play and Hospitalised Children's Stress

• Article - Effect of play activities on hospitalized children's stress: a randomized clinical trial
• Presentation - February 2013
• Procedural Pain
• Article - Distracting children during blood draw: Looking through distraction cards is effective in pain relief of children during blood draw
• Presentation - October 2012

TOPICS DISCUSSED

This page contains research articles and information regarding topics discussed at the Paediatric Journal Club. Click on the topics below to view articles, critical appraisal and presentations.

If there is a particular topic that you would like to see discussed at the Journal Club, please tell us >>

Past Journal Club Topics

• EMLA cream/heat and venous cannulation
• Intepreting RCT Results
• Play and Hospitalised Children's Stress

What is Relative Risk?

What is a p value.

The Relative Risk tells us how many more times likely an event will occur in the intervention or exposure group (EGO) relative to the control group (CGO).

RR= EGO/CGO

The P value can usually be seen in the Results table within an article and refers to the probability that any particular outcome could have been due to chance. Look at the P value. If it is less than 0.05 it is statistically significant (acceptable).

Interpreting Research Study Results

• Critical Appraisal Checklist

Interpreting RCT Results

• Interpreting RCT results

Journal Club Oct 9th, 2012

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• Last Updated: Feb 9, 2024 8:38 AM
• URL: https://library.health.nt.gov.au/paeds

For Earth Day, Try These Green Classroom Activities (Downloadable)

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Earth Day is April 22 in the United States and the day the spring equinox occurs in some parts of the world. It’s a day to reflect on the work being done to raise awareness of climate change and the need to protect natural resources for future generations. Protecting the earth can feel like an enormous, distant undertaking to young people. To help them understand that they can play a role by focusing on their backyards or school yards, educators can scale those feelings of enormity to manageable activities that make a difference.

We collected simple ideas for teachers and students to educate, empower, and build a connection with nature so that they may be inspired to respect it and protect it. Classrooms can be the perfect greenhouse to grow future stewards of the environment.

Click to Download the Activities

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