1. POSTER TEMPLATES BY: www.POSTERPRESENTATIONS.com 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 where you obtained your subjects, over what time period, and which specific inclusion and exclusion criteria were used. If this was a prospective study, you will need to state whether informed consent was obtained. Professional Template for a 60x36 for Clinical Study poster presentation Your name and the names of the people who have contributed to this presentation go here The names and addresses of the associated institutions go here. Research Question Charts/Graphs/Pictures Discussion References Significance Analyses Subjects Contact/Printing Information Results We also encourage you to take advantage of the GRMERC Research Department support, including: Idea/protocol development, research design, IRB compliance, statistical analysis, review of presentation/publication content Email: research@grmerc.netresearch@grmerc.net Phone: 616-732-6223 Send your completed poster template to research@grmerc.net research@grmerc.net Design Specify 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 Remember: Not only is a retrospective chart review not a study design, it’s redundantly redundant. It’s probably really a case series or retrospective cohort study. When in doubt, please check with your co-authors, or contact the GRMERC Research Department. 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. Don’t Be Constrained by These Headings Every study is different, so don’t feel like you have to mash your round pegs to fit into this template’s square holes. Add sections and headings as dictated by 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. 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 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. Hint: Don’t just regurgitate the same information already present in your tables and figures. Pick out specific pieces of information on which you would like your reader to focus. 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. Conclusions & Implications The big finish, where you get to blow your audience away with your final, pithy comments. 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. 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. Discussion (continued) 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.