Effective and engaging presentations can be a challenging achievement to attain. But the challenge doubles with healthcare presentations, when details of the topic at hand sound alien to the general public.

Whether you’re about to give a lecture in a seminar, inform the market about a new medical breakthrough, or pitch to potential investors, you can prevent your audience from nodding off to sleep. Here are three practical tips to make your healthcare presentations engaging.

Here are three practical tips to make your healthcare presentations engaging.

Be accessible

It’s easy to lose your audience to technical terms and concepts, so it’s important to keep your healthcare presentations accessible. You can do this in three simple ways:

1.) Use PowerPoint slides

Well-designed PowerPoint slides can help your audience visualize the structure of your presentation, preventing them from feeling lost or confused. Use large font sizes (at least 30 points, according to keynote speaker and renowned venture capitalist, Guy Kawasaki) and keep the number of slides to a minimum. Create an attractive but simple PowerPoint design by using color schemes, backgrounds, and fonts consistently.

2.) Explain difficult concepts with illustrations, stories, and metaphors 

Healthcare presentations are informative in nature, so it’s impossible to completely eradicate the use of technical terms. Illustrate difficult concepts with flowcharts or graphs. You can also try to relate these concepts through stories from your own experience or clever metaphors.

3.) Explain jargon in layman’s terms

Similarly, try your to avoid using jargon. If you have to, explain them in a language that’s easy to understand.

Get straight to the point 

Condense your talk into concise points that are pertinent to your audience’s needs. Don’t waste your time explaining a complicated concept, because it can easily lead you off tangent.

Keep your talking points short but significant by answering What’s, Why’s, and How’s.

Prepare a complete handout

Presenters often make the crucial mistake of giving out printed copies of their slides as handouts. While this may work sometimes, remember that there is a difference between the two:

Your PowerPoint slides are visual aids that help enhance your presentation. Handouts are for your audience to refer back to after your presentation.

A complete handout has all the information you discussed organized into neat sections, plus the handy illustrations you used to explain complicated concepts.

You can also use it as a ‘footnote’ section by expounding on some details you edited out of your pitch.

Conclusion

Each presentation type is unique. Healthcare presentations may be more technical and specific than others, but that doesn’t mean it should be less engaging.

Make your pitch and your deck more accessible to your audience, be as straightforward as possible to keep your content compact, and don’t forget to prepare a handout that delineates each key point.

Deliver an effective healthcare presentation with these tips!