Present your patients like this – and your attending will love you

Presenting cases is one of the most important skills in medicine. Mastering this skill will greatly improve your work as a doctor and enhance your career. When you give good presentations, your attending will

• know you understood the patient
• trust your judgement and
• give you more responsibilities.

Doctors, who know how to present a patient will be perceived as professional by their colleagues and bosses. Here are 7 key points. 

1. Time is valuable, especially to attendings.

   Everybody in the hospital complains that they have more work than time. So don’t waste his time. Make your presentations brief and to the point. Try to focus your presentation on the most important facts.

2. Give him a short summary of what you found out.

   The whole point of a presentation is to save the attending time, so he doesn’t have to take the history again. He trusts you that you emphasize the most important points and that you leave out irrelevant stuff.

   This applies especially to the medical history. E.g. Hyperthyroidism is irrelevant if the patient presents with foot pain, but is important if he presents with palpitations and chest pain.

3. No emotions.

   Emotions are OK and even important in medicine, but not in a case presentation. The goal of the presentation is to put your attending in a position where he can make an objective decision on the further procedure.

   How you feel about the patient. whether he was unfriendly or charming is irrelevant. It doesn’t help the patient and takes time. Save the anecdotes and the gossips for later.

4. Use professional language.

   I have seen experienced doctors demonstrate a seizure or athetotic movements. Avoid that where possible, because that looks rather dorky than professional. Use professional terms like tonic-clonic or focal seizure.
   If he wants to have more information you can still start your show. Also you want to be able to give a presentation on the phone so you better learn the terminology.

5. Use as few words as necessary…

   …but no less! For example you should mention that the patient shows depressive symptoms like loss of appetite, sleeplessness etc. But you shouldn’t tell any stories about how exactly that looks like at home. One sentence and he gets it.

6. Don’t leave out things that don’t support your theory.

   If you have your differential diagnosis and everything perfectly lines up your attending will get suspicious. He may feel challenged to find a weakness in your theory. If he finds out you left something out, that’s a minus point for you.

7. Interpretation at the end.

   Many attendings will want your opinion on how to proceed further. Be prepared to make suggestions on the further workup but wait to be asked before you share them.

Question: Do you struggle with making good presentations? Leave a comment below.