Podium Presentation Guidelines

The COS Program Committee and Board are delighted to have your presentation on this year's program.  As you prepare your podium presentation, please observe the following guidelines for the meeting.  Please focus on the essence of your research and eliminate unnecessary background information and lengthy discussion. Your presentation should be an abstract in PowerPoint form.  Please do not read your slides.  Please include the following:

1. Title Slide.  Avoid thanking your co-authors.  We know that you appreciate their contribution to your research.   

2.  Disclosure Slide.  As a CME provider COS is required by the ACCME to obtain and share with meeting participants any potential conflicts of presenters and coauthors. This information must be included on the 1st or 2nd slide of your presentation, following the title, and should be projected for at least three seconds. Please use one of the following statements to provide this information:
•    ‘I (or my coauthors) have nothing to disclose’; or
•    ‘I (and/or my coauthors) have something to disclose’ along with a referral for more detailed disclosure information on the COS App or via the Disclosure Program on the AAOS website.

3.  Immediately proceed to the purpose/hypothesis.  If you need a couple of background slides, that is fine, but be sure that it is essential and useful to the audience.

4.  Materials and Methods.  Present the information that tells the audience that your research is sound, that your methods are valid, and that you employed appropriate statistics when applicable.  Please avoid an exhaustive description of every detail of your methods -- the audience will not remember or even understand in this setting.

5.  Results.  Focus on the results that pertain to your purpose and hypothesis.   Let us know the statistical significance of your most important findings.  The audience likes graphs and tables, but please don't put up a complicated table, flow chart, or graph that is difficult to follow and takes you 2 minutes to explain.  Give us the "meat" of your findings.

6.  Discussion.  Tell us the significance of your research and its clinical significance. Avoid a comprehensive review of the entire history of your topic.  Simply discuss why your research is important.  If there is previous literature that is supported by yours or that yours disproves, then please let us know that as well.  However, focus on the significance of your research and not a summary of the entire orthopaedic literature on your subject.

7.  Give only one or two conclusion slides to summarize what your research taught us.

8.  Your presentation should not be more than 20 slides.

Irrespective of how complex your research, you can do this in the allotted time.  You will appreciate it and the audience will appreciate it.  At most, the audience will take away 2 or 3 points from your presentation.  This format allows a lot of good research with maximum educational value to be included in this year's scientific program. Moreover, it means less work for you.   Take out slides or combine slides to give us only the essence of your research in this presentation.

Thank you and please be in the room at the beginning of the session you are presenting.