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Tips for Preparing a Tutorial

Define Content

To a certain extent, this has already been done for you. However, try not to duplicate the work of others. Looking at the rest of the teaching timetable and try to spot overlaps. Liase with your colleagues closely.

The main focus here is to integrate teaching to facilitate interpretation. So, think of any factor that can affect your interpretation of a radiographic study. Think of all the common pitfalls that can be misinterpreted as pathology. Then weave it into your teaching about intepretation of studies showing abnormalities.

Basic Science Topics to Include

  • Normal variants (relevant/ important ones only!)
  • Relevant embryology
  • Paediatric /developmental issues
  • Normal age-related changes
  • Appearances on all different modalities - plain film / ultrasound / CT / MRI / nuclear med / contrast studies / interventional diagnostic procedures
  • Appearances in different anatomical planes
  • Relevant extra bits - function, effect of posture or movement, insp/exp, blood supply and drainage, innervation, lymphatic drainage, origin of name

Abnormalities to Include

The focus on most teaching is about common abnormalities; the kind of thing that might be mundane but you see day-in, day-out. Aim not to scuff the surface on these but aim to instill a deep knowledge of these issues, incisively illustrating the important issues and relevance to patient management.

The second focus is on important conditions. These conditions should be the ones to never miss; the sort of thing that other clinicians walk past but that a radiologist should not. Don't focus on exceedingly rare conditions that you would be lucky to see once in your life but the sort of thing that if missed, is well known to adversely affect patient management.

The last focus is on hints, tips and shortcuts. These evidence-based shortcuts that radiologists use in every day practice to help them interpret their studies. But do stress the exceptions to such heuristics.

Hint - Keep it relevant!

As a rule of thumb, if you cannot think of a reasonably common (or at least serious) clinical circumstance where it would be useful to know particular fact, then ignore it. Having said that, some famous exam questions do hinge on trivia! Use your discretion.

Hint - Keep it radiological!

A lot of anatomy is less relevant to the radiologist. Don’t emphasise surface anatomy, surgical anatomy or images from dissections / conventional anatomy texts. Use radiological texts as your guide.

Hint - Keep it up to date!

Pneumoencephalography is all well and groovy, nice for illustrative purposes but is in the radiological dustbin. Ditto, it can be too up to date - use modalities that are in the mainstream.

Decide on Media

It doesn’t have to be on PowerPoint! PowerPoint does have advantages but it confines you to what you can put into it. For example, it is easier to draw on a film with a Chinagraph pencil than digitize it and attempt to electronically annotate it.

Mix it up! Use a combination of annotated films, PowerPoint and handouts. If you are adept, use video too. Keep it simple, tho’.

Rather than putting your own digital images into powerpoint, most images can be found on the web. Use Google’s image search to locate the image that you want and the hard work is removed.

Hint - Keep it concise

A 1 hour PowerPoint show should have less than 60 slides in it. Each slide should have no more than 8 lines of text. 

Structure your Talk

If you stand up and give a one hour monologue, most folk lose everyone within five mins. Structure is good. One tried and trusted method is:

  1. Tell ‘em what your gonna tell ‘em
  2. Tell ‘em
  3. Tell ‘em what you’ve just told ‘em

Even better, break it up a little. Keep each section less than 20 mins. You can break a talk up into sections, reiterating this principle for each section. For example

Overview - sections 1-3 (Tell ‘em what your gonna tell ‘em)

Section 1

  1. Tell ‘em what your gonna tell ‘em
  2. Tell ‘em
  3. Tell ‘em what you’ve just told ‘em

Section 2

  1. Tell ‘em what your gonna tell ‘em
  2. Tell ‘em
  3. Tell ‘em what you’ve just told ‘em

Section 3

  1. Tell ‘em what your gonna tell ‘em
  2. Tell ‘em
  3. Tell ‘em what you’ve just told ‘em

Overview - Tell ‘em what you’ve just told ‘em

Conclusion

You should aim to spend six hours preparing a one-hour talk. Keep it simple and structured. It should prove a highly educational experience! I hope you enjoy it.

Paul McCoubrie October 2010