In December of this year, my final Christmas term as a medical student, I had the opportunity to present an oral presentation at the winter meeting of the British Association of Clinical Anatomists held in the Suttie Centre, Aberdeen. The presentation in question was regarding my honours project that I had completed earlier on in the year as part of my intercalated degree in Anatomy. It was a project that I had worked hard on and so I was looking forward to the chance to present it to a scientific audience. However, on the day of the meeting my nerves wouldn’t settle and I had started to doubt myself. I had never presented or even attended a formal conference before. The sight of lots of people all dressed incredibly professionally who had come from all over the world to attend certainly unnerved me. Despite this, I found a way to distract and calm myself until my time to present came.
My presentation was all about tendon transfer surgery to help treat people with damaged nerves in their upper arms, and specifically, which surgery may be best for them. It is a topic that I am passionate about, and I tried my best to allow this to come through when I was talking. I have always been nervous standing up in front of an audience, but the more I do it the more I find comfort in being able to talk passionately and knowledgeably about a subject. I think that if you can find a topic where you are motivated to spread a message to your audience and not just talk at them, then you can begin to find joy in public speaking. My presentation went well, short and sweet at 7 minutes, but I enjoyed the experience.
After I had finished, I was asked some challenging questions that I had not considered, and this really tested me on the spot. In hindsight I could have maybe foreseen these and then answered them more comprehensively. But instead, I tended to skip around the answer in a fairly political fashion to try to hide my gap in knowledge in this area. But this is something that I will remember for the future and pay special attention to in my next presentation. I received a round of applause (and to my delight even some vocal encouragement from some very enthusiastic members who had travelled from Saudi Arabia), and I was ushered back to my seat in the lecture theatre. Feeling a sense of relief, I was then able to enjoy the rest of the oral talks and network with other students and anatomy colleagues.
Overall, my first experience presenting at a conference taught me a lot about public speaking and delivering an effective presentation. I still have a lot of things to work on, but I am excited about the next opportunity that may come my way. I would like to thank the university of Aberdeen for providing funding for my registration fee for this conference, and also to my supervisor Prof Jayasinghe for his support.
