Abstract
BACKGROUND
Residents demonstrate scholarly activity by presenting posters at academic meetings. Although recommendations from national organizations are available, evidence identifying which components are most important is not.
OBJECTIVE
To develop and test an evaluation tool to measure the quality of case report posters and identify the specific components most in need of improvement.
DESIGN
Faculty evaluators reviewed case report posters and provided on-site feedback to presenters at poster sessions of four annual academic general internal medicine meetings. A newly developed ten-item evaluation form measured poster quality for specific components of content, discussion, and format (5-point Likert scale, 1 = lowest, 5 = highest).
Main outcome measure(s): Evaluation tool performance, including Cronbach alpha and inter-rater reliability, overall poster scores, differences across meetings and evaluators and specific components of the posters most in need of improvement.
RESULTS
Forty-five evaluators from 20 medical institutions reviewed 347 posters. Cronbach’s alpha of the evaluation form was 0.84 and inter-rater reliability, Spearman’s rho 0.49 (p < 0.001). The median score was 4.1 (Q1 -Q3, 3.7-4.6)(Q1 = 25th, Q3 = 75th percentile). The national meeting median score was higher than the regional meetings (4.4 vs, 4.0, P < 0.001). We found no difference in faculty scores. The following areas were identified as most needing improvement: clearly state learning objectives, tie conclusions to learning objectives, and use appropriate amount of words.
CONCLUSIONS
Our evaluation tool provides empirical data to guide trainees as they prepare posters for presentation which may improve poster quality and enhance their scholarly productivity.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Accreditation Council on Graduate Medical Education (ACGME), Educational Program, Residents’ Scholarly Activities. http://www.acgme.org/acWebsite/navPages/commonpr_documents/IVB123_EducationalProgram_ResidentScholarlyActivity_Documentation.pdf. Accessed 10/17/08.
Accreditation Council on Graduate Medical Education (ACGME), ACGME Program Requirements for Residency Education in Internal Medicine, Effective July 1, 2007. http://www.acgme.org/acWebsite/downloads/RRC_progReq/140_im_07012007.pdf. Accessed 10/17/08.
Rivera JA, Levine RB, Wright SM. Completing a scholarly project during residency training. Perspectives of residents who have been successful. JGIM. 2005;20:366–9.
Drenth JPH, Smits P, Thien T, Stalenhoef AFH. The case for case reports in the Netherlands Journal of Medicine. Neth J Med. 2006;64:262–4.
Vandenbroucke JP. In defense of case reports and case series. Ann Intern Med. 2001;134:330–4.
The New England Journal of Medicine. http://authors.nejm.org/Help/acHelp.asp. Accessed 10/17/08
Estrada CA, Heudebert GR, Centor RM. JGIM New section: Case reports and clinical vignettes. J Gen Intern Med. 2005;20:971.
Levine RB, Hebert RS, Wright SM. Resident research and scholarly activity in internal medicine residency training programs. J Gen Intern Med. 2005;20:155–9.
Alguire PC, Anderson WA, Albrecht RR, Poland GA. Resident Research in Internal Medicine Training Programs. Ann Intern Med. 1996;124:321–8.
Carroll AE, Sox CM, Tarini BA, Ringold S, Christakis DA. Does presentation format at the Pediatric Academic Societies’ Annual meeting predict subsequent publication. Pediatrics. 2003;112:1238–41.
Nguyen V, Tornetta P III, Bkaric M. Publication rates for the scientific sessions of the OTA: Orthopaedic Trauma Association. J Orthop Trauma. 1998;12:457–59.
Erren TC, Bourne PE. Ten simple rules for a good poster presentation. PLoS Computational Biology. 2007;3(5):e102.
Preston CF, Bhandari M, Fulkerson E, Ginat D, Koval KJ, Egol KA. Podium versus Poster Publicaiton Rates at the Orthopaedic Trauma Association. Clinical Orthopaedics and Related Research. 2005;437:260–64.
Sprague S, Bhandari M, Devereaux PJ, et al. Barriers to full-text publication following presentation of abstracts at annual orthopaedic meetings. J Bone Joint Surg Am. 2003;85-A:158–63.
Bhandari M, Devereaux PJ, Guyatt GH, et al. An observational study of orthopaedic abstracts and subsequent full-text publications. J Bone Joint Surg Am. 2002;84-A:615–21.
Weber EJ, Callaham ML, Wears RL, Barton C, Young G. Unpublished research from a medical specialty meeting why investigators fail to publish. JAMA. 1998;280:257–9.
Gandhi SG, Gilbert WM. Society of gynecologic investigation: what gets published. Reprod Sci. 2004;11:562–5.
American College of Physicians. Preparing a Poster Presentation. http://www.acponline.org/srf/abstracts/pos_pres.htm. Accessed 10/17/08
Society of General Internal Medicine, Poster Tips. http://sgim.org/userfiles/file/PosterTips.pdf, Accessed 10/17/08
Swarthmore College. Purrington, C.B. Advice on designing scientific posters. http://www.swarthmore.edu/NatSci/cpurrin1/posteradvice.htm. Accessed 10/17/08, 2006.
Wolcott TG. Mortal sins in poster presentations or, How to give the poster no one remembers. Newsletter of the Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology 1997. Fall:10–11
Boullata JI, Mancuso CE. A “how-to” guide in preparing abstracts and poster presentations. Nutr Clin Pract. 2007;22:641–6.
Block S. The DOs and DON’Ts of poster presentation. Biophysical Journal. 1996;71:3527–9.
Durbin CG Jr. Effective use of tables and figures in abstracts, presentations, and papers. Respir Care. 2004;49:1233–7.
Bushy A. A tool to systematically evaluate QA poster displays. J Nurs Qual Assur. 1990;4(4):82–5.
Garrison A, Bushy A. The research poster appraisal tool (R-PAT-II): Designing and evaluating poster displays, JHQ Online July/August 2004, W4-24-W4-29, http://www.nahq.org/journal
Smith PE, Fuller G, Dunstan F. Scoring posters at scientific meetings: first impressions count. J R Soc Med. 2004;97:340–1.
American College of Physicians, http://www.acponline.org/residents_fellows/competitions/abstract/prepare/judge_criteria.pdf. Accessed September 24, 2008
Acknowledgements
The authors have no potential conflicts of interest to report. Dr. Lisa L. Willett had full access to all the data in the study and takes responsibility for the integrity of the data and the accuracy of the data analysis. The authors wish to thank the members of the 2006 Southern Regional SGIM planning committee and the faculty evaluators who provided feedback at the meetings.
Funding
None.
Conflict of Interest
None disclosed.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Additional information
Presented in part at the 2008 Society of General Internal Medicine Southern Regional Meeting, February 22, 2008, New Orleans, Louisiana.
Appendix: Evaluation Form
Appendix: Evaluation Form
Poster Presenter Academic Institution is in: ❒ Canada (1) ❒ USA (2) (List State):
-
What is the best component of this poster?
-
What is one area that could improve this poster?
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Willett, L.L., Paranjape, A. & Estrada, C. Identifying Key Components for an Effective Case Report Poster: An Observational Study. J GEN INTERN MED 24, 393–397 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11606-008-0860-1
Received:
Revised:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11606-008-0860-1