1. POSTER TEMPLATES BY: www.POSTERPRESENTATIONS.com Research Question Design Charts/Graphs/Pictures Analyses Results Discussion (continued) Significance References While it is a nice thing to include references, if you’re crunched for space, these are the first things to go. If the choice is between including a really good looking graph or the references, ditch the references and show the graph. Conclusions The big finish, where you get to blow your audience away with your final, pithy comment. This should be brief, three sentences tops. If you’re at a loss for words, you can either do a combined Discussion/Conclusions section, or just do a conclusions section that reiterates the importance of your study. Lights! Camera! Graphs! Photos! Lurid Data! Yow! You get the idea. Here is where you put your eyeball grabbing data, amazing graphs, and stupendous radiology and photos. Just don’t get all carried away with the three-D stuff and the retina searing color combinations. Provide your information in a clear, informative, and yes, entertaining fashion. Remember to number all Tables and Figures, so that you can easily refer to them in the Results section. Don’t Be Constrained by These Headings Every case is different, so don’t feel like you have to mash your round pegs to fit into the template’s square holes. Add sections and headings as are dictated by your study. Identify the specific aims for your study. Using the literature, establish any previous work related to your research question. This section should describe the gaping hole in the literature, and how your specific aims will attempt to address the gaping hole. What research design was used to address your specific aims? Examples include: Case series, case-control, retrospective cohort, cross-sectional, prospective cohort, randomized controlled trial HEY!! - Not only is a retrospective chart review not a study design, it’s redundantly redundant. Get your terms straight, buckaroo! It’s probably really a case series or retrospective cohort study, but if in doubt, please check with your co-authors, or contact the GRMEP Research Department. Subjects Procedures/Variables/Definitions This section basically describes your experimental treatments/interventions (if any), your methods of obtaining your data, and a description of your variables. So, if you had a treatment to describe how you removed a patient’s spleen using two magnets and a bungee cord, that would go in here. Likewise, you would provide information about a chart review in this section as well. Provide information about your primary outcome variable, as well as all secondary outcome variables. At times, it will be necessary to define these variables, so please be precise. This is where you’d plop your patient information but, truth be told, not all studies involve patients, so adjust your heading accordingly. For example, you could have done an animal study, worked with cells, or even run a meta-analysis. Assuming this is a clinical study, however, you need to provide information to your reader concerning your subjects. You should describe from where you obtained your subjects, over what time period, and using which specific inclusion and exclusion criteria. If this was a prospective study, you will need to state whether informed consent was obtained. Use this section to provide a brief description of the statistical tests used, your sample size justification (if pertinent to your study), and your criterion for significance (e.g., P < 0.05). Here’s where you provide some detail to all of the cool tables and figures that you have provided. Make sure that the reader is very aware of what you consider to be the major findings from your study. This is also a place to remark upon some of the minor findings that did not make their way into any of your tables and figures. HEY!! - Don’t just regurgitate the same information that is already present in your tables and figures. Pick out specific pieces of information upon which you would like your reader to focus. Discussion The discussion section is used to summarize the main findings from your study, and to interpret your results relative to current findings in the literature. At times, you will need to continue a section from the bottom of one column to the top of the next. When you do this, be sure to rename the heading, with the word “continued” in parentheses, so that the reader can more easily follow the flow of the poster. Title Authors Associated institutions