Medical Conference Deck

About this template

Ten slides that organize the talk itself

Ten slides for a conference oral presentation, an in-house case conference or a study progress report – a fixed slot with questions immediately after. What is unusual is that the body is not the study but the preparation. The agenda on slide 2 has five lines: presentation overview, conflict-of-interest disclosure, standard versus new procedure, key metrics, trend; the two lines that own divider-plus-body pairs are the overview and the disclosure. Use this file as a frame for fixing the conditions of the talk, then duplicate divider-and-body pairs to carry the science. For a 30-minute invited lecture or a poster session it is the wrong length.

Start from the time budget

Slide 4 ships with “10-minute oral, 5-minute discussion”, “session 3, hall A”, and “share the chair’s checklist in advance”. Enter the slot you were actually given, then work the slide count back from it: removing cover and closing, ten minutes leaves about sixty seconds a slide. If the arithmetic fails, cut slides rather than add them. Slide 6 says the disclosure should be the second slide – which this file does not do, since the disclosure sits on slide 6. Most societies want it right after the cover, so move the disclosure divider and body forward.

Making room for the science

Of the five agenda lines only the first two own divider-and-body pairs (slides 3-4 and 5-6); the other three are the comparison slide 7, the metrics slide 8 and the chart on slide 9. There is no place at all for background, methods and results, so duplicate the 3-4 pair three times and add the matching agenda lines. Three pairs carry most oral talks and take the deck to sixteen slides, which you should re-check against your slot. Write the methods slide as design, then population and follow-up, then the primary outcome.

• e.g. single-center retrospective cohort, enrolled March 2021 to February 2024
• e.g. 486 patients, 173 per arm after propensity score matching
• e.g. primary outcome 90-day reoperation, secondary outcome length of stay

Reading the two number slides

Slide 8 holds 10 minutes of speaking time, 14 slides, a 300-word abstract and 5 anticipated questions. These count readiness, not results, so update them after rehearsal and the slide doubles as a co-author circulation check. Note that the file itself is 10 slides, which contradicts the “14 slides” card – fix it to your final count, and remember the 10-minute tile repeats the first line of slide 4. Slide 9 shows four bars, introduction 72, methods 144, results 198, conclusion 66, with no unit. They sum to 480, which read as seconds is eight minutes and leaves two minutes of slack in a ten-minute slot. If you use it that way, label the unit as seconds under the bars; if you replace it with study data, state the axis unit and the arm names. The bars are shapes, so resize by (value / largest value).

What rehearsal is for

Read it aloud once; if you overrun, delete one of the three bullets rather than a slide, which disturbs the flow less. The cover has a descriptive line and a presenter / affiliation line – put the society name, session number and the exact author order there. If the author order differs from the abstract book, the chair’s introduction is wrong before you speak. The closing line stays on screen through the whole discussion, so replace the template phrase with your single-sentence conclusion.

What gets challenged from the floor

• Leaving slide 7 with its shipped numbers – operating time 148 to 96 minutes, stay 8.4 to 4.2 days, complications 9.1% to 3.4%. Those are not your data; replace them and add case counts and follow-up period.
• Pasting a screenshot of a full paper table; cut it to three rows or turn it into a figure.
• Counting five anticipated questions without writing the answers; keep question and answer in the speaker notes.
• A conclusion that no longer matches the 300-word abstract; if the analysis changed after submission, say so on the results slide first.