Scheduled Meeting Time

In Pocatello, held Fridays 3PM to 5PM during Fall Semester, LH 162. Presentations begin promptly at 3 & 4 PM. Both daily presenters should arrive no later than 2:50 PM to set up. Talks should be 45 minutes in length to allow time for questions. If you haven't completed your presentation in 45 minutes, you will be stopped. Time your presentation to avoid losing points for an incomplete seminar.

Attendance

You must attend at least 70% of all seminars while you are on rotation in Pocatello, Idaho Falls, Twin Falls, and the surrounding areas in order to pass the course. You will be excused from those seminars that occur when you are outside the Idaho Falls/Twin Falls/Pocatello area.

We will take role by using an attendance sheet. Because so much work goes into these presentations, feedback from the entire audience is appreciated; please complete an evaluation form even if you are not an official grader.

All of your preceptors should know they need to release you on Friday afternoons for seminar. If they are unsure about this or have questions, have them contact Dr. Rick Rhodes to arrange an excused absence for you.

Purpose of Seminar

• Gain experience giving presentations
• Learn how to use presentation software
• Demonstrate the ability to critically evaluate medical literature
• Show that you can defend your conclusions

The Professional Student (P4) seminar should be viewed as a cross-section of the pharmacotherapeutic knowledge base and critical thinking skills gained and developed while attending pharmacy school. In addition, it serves as a means of displaying the written and verbal abilities of the student in assessing, addressing, presenting, and drawing evidence-based conclusions on a topic relevant to practicing pharmacists.

Where to Start

The rules hold for Pocatello-based students only.

Choose a topic. Keep in mind that proposed topics are first-come-first-serve. A link to the syllabus will be maintained on the College's Current Students Pharm.D. Web page http://pharmacy.isu.edu/live/current/pharmd.html. Select Senior Seminar from the Current Students Pharm.D. Web page. A current schedule with topics will be posted on Class Notes for students and faculty to view.

Good places to find drug topics are: InPharma (Idaho Health Sciences Library), FDA web site, Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews under A-Z Journal List (http://www.isu.edu/library/research/), and the Pharmacist's Letter.

Submit a topic that meets the following criteria:

• A topic narrow enough to allow thorough coverage (e.g., not a drug review)
• Availability of primary literature (at least 2 studies)
• The subject requires you to come to a literature-based conclusion (e.g., is once-daily aminoglycoside dosing superior to more traditional bid/tid dosing?)
• Subject matter that is of value to a practicing pharmacist
• Do not give a presentation on a newly approved drug- new indications for old drugs are acceptable
• Your topic MUST be approved by a clinical faculty member with expertise in the area

Develop a handout. The handout should contain clear objectives for your presentation and a complete list of references. Do not use a copy of your slides as a handout. Handouts contain a detailed outline of your talk. Feel free to include tables and graphs from your references as long as it is clear where they came from. Also, it's a good idea to number your references in the order presented in the handout and use superscripts like this¹⁰ to reference your statements.

You CAN use information from another source as long as it is clearly referenced. For example use phrases like "adapted from Jones et al NEJM 1997;34:456-98" or "While the authors stated, 'Drug X is clearly better than drug Y because blah blah', I believe drug x y is actually superior because of blah blah blah." Your conclusions must be your own.

The faculty will be happy to provide guidance and give feedback while you are developing your handout; but it is YOUR responsibility to give adequate time - do not expect much help if you provide a rough draft a week before your presentation.

You need to e-mail an electronic copy of your handout to the Pharmacy Practice Secretary (Deb) for copying and posting by 5 pm the Wednesday prior to your seminar. This can be e-mailed to Deb using the following address: deb@pharmacy.isu.edu. She will also make and distribute flyers to advertise your seminar.

• Handouts will likewise be posted to the Class Notes drive.
• If you procrastinate, copying, collating, and stapling will be your responsibility.

Contact two faculty members. You are to choose two faculty members or residents from the approved list to evaluate your presentation on the day it is given. The scores of the faculty evaluators will each contribute forty percent (40%) to your grade. These individuals need may or may not be the same faculty members you have asked to provide guidance through the development of your seminar. The final twenty percent (20%) of the grade is calculated by the scores of the student evaluators. Remember, you evaluate the week after you present.

Practice your presentation. Be sure you try out your presentation several days before your actual seminar date. Contact Marty Welch (marty@pharmacy.isu.edu) via e-mail or by phone at 208.251.5481 to schedule and determine the best time for your practice sessions. He will meet with you and show you how to set up the room for any future practices. Cindy Walker can supply you with a laser pointer if you wish.

Suggested structure of your seminar: Remember, you only have 45 minutes.

5-10 minutes Introduce yourself and your topic (even if everyone in the room already knows you). Explain why you chose your subject. Review your objectives (remember that the objectives are goals for the audience to meet during the course of your presentation). Give a general overview of the topic and any pertinent background and/or pathophysiologic information. Briefly review comparator drugs as they relate to your topic. The overview may also include disease incidence, demographics, epidemiology, etiology, or whatever you think is important for your audience to know. Review the high points of your introduction with an internal summary.

20 minutes Body of seminar. Be sure to restate the purpose of your seminar and emphasize the clinical importance/relevance of the topic. Most students narrow the focus of their literature review to two studies. However some students have been very creative in developing a broader meta-analysis type approach. Describe these studies in detail. Be sure to include goal of the study, number and type of patients used, inclusion and exclusion criteria, variables measured, and statistical significance of the results. This should be followed by a critical analysis of the study.

Be sure to address whether the results are applicable to the general population (for example, a study that excludes patients with a history of PUD from an NSAID study and then proceeds to tell you that NSAIDs don't cause or exacerbate ulcers is not good science - you can't tell a physician that, based upon that study, NSAIDs don't cause or worsen ulcers).

Also, if you're discussing a study comparing two drugs, discuss whether equipotent dosages were utilized.

You can scan tables, charts, or diagrams on the scanners in the Pharmacy student lounge, the data station near the Biomedical and Pharmaceutical Sciences offices or, if you have an ISU computing account, in the ISU computer labs and import them into PowerPoint. Often it is best to take the time to type up a table yourself on a PowerPoint slide. Pick out just the most important information and leave the rest out. Just be sure the information is readable from the back of the room.

Review each study and the conclusions you believe can be drawn at the end of this section (or at the end of each study you discuss).

5-10 minutes Come to a definitive conclusion and be able to defend it. What do you, as a health care professional, recommend and why? And how does this information fit into the big picture (for example, you can't talk about the use of bisphosphonates to treat osteoporosis without addressing how their efficacy compares with that of estrogens or just plain calcium).

5-10 minutes Welcome questions from the audience. You can't know everything about everything, so expect to say "I don't know" at least once. "I don't know" is preferable to talking around the question without really answering it or stating something you're not absolutely sure of as fact.

Total time should not exceed 45 minutes. Talks should be 45 minutes in length to allow time for questions. If you haven't completed your presentation in 45 minutes, you will be stopped. Time your presentation to avoid losing points for an incomplete seminar.

Student Evaluators & Overall Grading. Two student evaluators will be assigned to each presentation. The scores of both evaluators will each contribute ten percent (10%) to your grade to equal a total of twenty percent (20%). The other 80% of your grade is from your faculty/resident evaluators. The following scale will be used:

< 45 points = must repeat seminar
> 45 points = pass
> 54 points = honors
 
The evaluation form may be viewed at http://pharmacy.isu.edu/live/seminar/Semform2.pdf.

At the end of the seminar, both student and faculty evaluators will be asked to give a public, verbal assessment of the seminar, highlighting the presenter's strong points and offering constructive criticism for future presentations. All attendees will fill out an evaluation sheet, and these will be available for review by the presenter after your grade has been calculated.

Plagiarism. JUST SAY NO!! Plagiarism is defined as:

1. Presenting another author's ideas/information as your own without referencing the original source
2. Using a sentence word-for-word (even if you DO reference the original source)

You CAN use information from another source as long as it is clearly referenced. For example use phrases like "adapted from Jones et al NEJM 1997;34:456-98" or "While the authors stated, 'Drug X is clearly better than drug Y because blah blah', I believe drug x or y is actually superior because of blah blah blah." Your conclusions must be your own.

General Hints.

• Do at least one dry run of your presentation a week or two beforehand. Have a friend listen and point out the "umms" and "uhhhs" and "okays" so you'll be more aware of them.
• Proof your slides (if your PowerPoint version does not have a spell-checker, you can do the whole thing in Microsoft Word, spell-check it, and then cut and paste into PowerPoint).
• If you use a term, know what it means and how to pronounce it (Lexi Drugs has a pronunciation guide)
• If you state something is "significantly different", be prepared to quote the p value and know how to define it
• Know the difference between prevalence and incidence
• Do not put pharmaceutical company logos on your slides - this makes it look like your talk was subsidized by a drug company
• Do NOT wait until the question/answer portion in order to state your conclusions
• If you recommend drug X over drug Y, be prepared to defend that choice
• Be able to answer the question, "If you were to design the definitive study on this topic, what would it be?"
• Do not plagiarize material from your references or from instructors/other students
• Don't READ your slides. Use them as cues and add material as you go.
• Be sure all graphs and charts are referenced
• Start preparing for seminar EARLY. Remember that if you have to order articles, it takes 7-10 working days to receive them (that's two full weeks). You can be pretty sure that someone will run a MEDLINE check on your references prior to your talk. If major articles are missed, saying "But they weren't in ISU's library" or "I ordered that, but it hasn't come in yet" won't help you
• If you are not based in Pocatello, and need articles you can't locate at a local library, call drug information at (208) 236-4689, and ask one of your classmates who is rotating through DI to help you pull and xerox them. Do NOT ask them to do your searches for you. That's your job. And if you're in, say, Reno, the libraries there are vastly superior to ISU's. You should be able to find everything you need.
• If you expect everyone to LOVE your talk, you're being unrealistic. When you have a heterogeneous mix of people, some are going to think it's great and others would have done it differently. That's life. Expect some criticism.

Seminar Hints from Dave Hachey

• Never apologize for the appearance of slides during presentation-take care of this before hand
• Keep the slides simple-use sound, animation VERY SPARINGLY...if at all
• Keep transitions simple and uniform
• Keep control of your laser pointer. Don't induce nausea or seizures in your audience by waving it around
• PRACTICE PRACTICE PRACTICE!
• Make sure you know how to use the equipment....before the day of your talk
• Stick with ONE font (ie. ARIAL) - avoid fonts with "feet" ie. Times New Roman
• Use large font-at least 20 pt
• Background colors-light text on dark background
• Avoid patterned backgrounds-too distracting
• Don't talk to the screen! Keep a copy of your slides/notes in front of you
• Don't read words off of slide
• Proofread your slides! Spelling!
• Stick to TIME! 1-2 min/slide
• Make sure your scanned pictures/tables are readable from the back of the room. If not, eliminate!
• 7 lines per slide
• AVOID ALL CAPITALS ON YOUR SLIDES. THIS IS HARD TO READ
• Fully explain graphs/tables
• Avoid red/green --color blind people can't see these colors
• If reviewing trials, include references
• Here is a reference: Spinler, S. "How to prepare and deliver pharmacy presentations." AJHP 1991:48;1730-39.
• Pictures enhance a talk...don't overdo it
• Transition slides-one word or blank
• Use the floating lines into a slide sparingly. Don't overdo it.
• Lighten the presentation with quotes, humor, pictures
• Delivery-SMILE! Remember, you are the one that prepared the talk...you know what you are talking about. Be positive! Dress professionally, keep hands out of pockets, don't fiddle with a pen, think before you speak....pause...to avoid UMS, Uh....and make sure the people in the back can hear you!
• Prepare for the unexpected. You should be able to give the presentation without your slides. Bring another disk, hardcopy etc.