Demystifying the path to the podium in interventional radiology

Episode Transcript

Recorded live from Cook Medical and featuring leading experts in the field of interventional radiology discussing a wide range of IR-related topics. This is the Cook@ SIR Podcast Series.

Hey, everyone. Welcome back to the Cook@ SIR podcast, I’m Dr. Parag Patel. And today’s episode is one I wish I had early in my career because we’re going to talk about something we all see at meetings, but really talk about, honestly: It’s the path or the journey to the podium. When you talk about national talks that might look polished and effortless, it turns out most of that starts off with some shaky nerves, overloaded slides, maybe a tech disaster here or there. And I’m joined by two incredible colleagues and friends, Dr. Jason Wong and Dr. Kaila Redifer, both phenomenal educators, mentors, and polished speakers in their own right. You’ve probably seen them where we’ll see them on stages across the meeting landscape, and they’re willing to share a little bit of their insights today. So, excited about that. And why don’t we jump right in? Dr. Wong, take us back. What was your very first national podium experience like?

Yeah, thanks for having me, Parag. So, I briefly mentioned that the first time, and then maybe the second time might even be more relevant for the podcast. The first one was a talk that I was “voluntold” to give for challenging CT interventions, and I was quite early in my career. There were many physicians, IRs, that had 20 plus years of experience, so, certainly felt the nerves there. But another talk was an aortic talk that again, I was voluntold to give at our national meeting, and Mike Dake happened to be a guest speaker for us that year. So, very anxious, very nervous, very imposter syndrome, felt like I wanted to barf. So, I think those were things that were challenging.

Kaila, what about you? What’s an early memorable experience for you?

So, my first podium experience was avoiding the podium actually or desperately hoping that I didn’t get called on. So, the first national meeting I attended was actually Society of Vascular Surgery as M3 medical student. And the way they had their abstracts formatted was this sort of round-robin poster presentation. And then if you were lucky enough, you got selected to present on the stage, and I don’t think I’ve ever spent so much time praying to not get picked to present something. But I guess in that scenario, luckily I didn’t, but it was a lot of nerves. Wanting to do a good job and trying to reconcile the cognitive dissonance of wanting to have a good presentation but not too good such that I would have to go up on the stage and talk in front of a bunch of people.

So, invariably first-time speakers at any national level are always going to feel like they know less than the people around them in the audience, right? Especially if there’s a keynote or someone expert. Jason, you mentioned having experts and people perhaps that you trained with. Kaila, you’re a med student, accepted abstract, and you’ve got all these faculty around. I mean, what are you doing to normalize that a little bit or get rid of the anxiety? Any tips or tricks there you’ve figured out over the years?

Yeah, I mean, I think preparation plays into it a lot. You go in over-prepared for any presentation like that, and whatever mantra works for you to get the jitters out and build confidence, that’s what I try to do.

I think being prepared is key, right? I think it’s normal to have those nerves, but in my early experience, I think I may have over-prepared. And I would rehearse the talk so much that I almost memorized each word, right? And that might be to the extreme, but certainly being prepared is going to be key to a successful talk. And I think generally the audience is very supportive and when you prepare so much, you probably know as much or more than the audience.

I think that’s a key point, right? No one knows your talk or your data or your information as well as you do because you’ve researched it, you’ve prepared it, you’ve been through those slides, and they don’t even know what’s coming, as far as your approach or what your take is. And so, there’s the secret to that part. And even as a young trainee, the mentors in the room generally are there to be supportive rather than confrontational, right? So, they’re not looking to call you out per se, but maybe redirect if that was the case.

But more than likely with preparation, you’re going to be right on point with your message. If you’re trying to build yourself— and you both shared early experiences. Mine are similar, but I’m the gray-haired one in the group, so this is a long time ago for me for my first time. But I can certainly say that nerves played a role in it, and I think that that motivated or drove me to try to balance that by overpreparation. That helped build confidence for me, whether that was a trainee presentation or an early-career presentation, that was the best way for me to manage the nerves is just know them inside and out, the slides, the talk, or my message.

Besides overpreparing, what else would you guys do to calm your nerves?

Another approach I did was if I was at a meeting, and I still do this too, a little bit, is I would see what are the other speakers speaking on. Who’s in my group, who’s in— If it was a scientific abstract, I’d be interested to see what the other talks were on or presentations were talking about because there may be some overlap, particularly in an educational session. I didn’t want to necessarily make my talk overlap with others, right? And that’s not the meeting organizers’ intent either. So, getting a sense for knowing where my place was in the programming and then being really clear, but also helped me understand a little better of what kind of questions may come up. Because typically a series or a session will follow with some panel discussion, and part of the nerves of giving the talk is one thing, and then being on the panel or follow-up questions after your talk and how do you prepare for that is a whole other thing. And so, to me that was a trick too, overprepare but then also understand the environment around you for that session.

My wife swears by bananas, she thinks it helps with the nerves.

That’s a new one.

Brain cramps, is that what it prevents? It’s like muscle cramps for athletes?

Yeah, I guess so.

Well, I think we’ve all experienced a little bit of that imposter syndrome early on, and I’d say if you’re being honest in a new area while you’re still building your expertise, there’s a little bit of that for sure. But I think that you have to overcome that at some point to get your way up to that podium. And frankly, most people will see that if you’ve done the work in your clinical practice or in your area of focus or research, that it’s not really imposter. You’re contributing, you’re teaching folks, you’re sharing your ideas, your experiences. Any other tips in building confidence as a speaker maybe early in your career, for example, starting locally at your hospital or angio clubs? Any thoughts? Is that something that you took part in or helped?

Yeah, I mean, I think that’s important is starting local and starting small. So, whether it’s giving lectures to your department or at a multidisciplinary meeting, participating in local regional angio clubs and in conferences in your area. People that— You might have some more familiar and friendly faces in the audience, building up your confidence just with the speaking part of it alone, I think in that regard helps.

Yeah, I would echo that. And I think grand rounds to other departments, right? Generally, sometimes there’s quite a big audience, and you mentioned it, Parag, is you know your material and you’re giving an IR talk to the internists, it’s quite a great venue because no one knows that material better than you. And often, they’re just super interested to learn, so it’s good way to get your feet wet.

I think a couple of great points there for sure. So, giving a talk to folks outside your specialty is one thing, right? There’s an opportunity to really become the expert for them, educate them in the message. But on the other side, multidisciplinary conferences, where you have other who are in your space who are actually knowledgeable about the disease entity and share maybe some of the management with you, can be a little bit daunting because they know the disease well. They may not know the intervention or perhaps the area that you’re focusing on, but it does keep you honest and certainly that can be a little bit more challenging perhaps in a competitive environment. But I think that’s important to try and do that a little bit locally, where that environment exists, before you go on to, say, a national stage.

I’m not sure if you have those opportunities, but certainly I think we have a multidisciplinary vascular conference and there’s an opportunity to present there. And certainly the vascular medicine doctors or the vascular surgeons are going to be prepared to ask questions and you need to be prepared to manage that. But I think in your home environment, it’s a totally different thing than folks who don’t know you as well but may be prepared to challenge the question after your talk. With regards to how you decide what you’re going to do, what topic you’re going to take and how do you tailor to an audience, Jason, you mentioned talking grand rounds, internal medicine. Have you ever given a talk where you missed the mark with the audience?

Oh, absolutely. Oh, yeah. Yeah, so one example I can think of, I was invited to a national tech and nurse meeting and they wanted me to give a talk on aortic interventions and it was an hour long, right? So, very long talk, and within 5, 10 minutes I could tell that I totally missed the mark. Everybody’s eyes were glazing over, and I think it was too detailed and too technical and also had some AV issues, so definitely struck out there for sure.

How about you Kaila?

Yeah, I mean, that brings a good point. If you know your audience as say internal medicine, like you listed that example, if you’re giving a grand rounds and they may not be familiar with even the guidelines on management of a certain disease space, starting with a super-high-level technical talk is maybe not the way to go. So yeah, I think understanding who’s in the room, whether it’s a trainee-level talk or somebody totally outside of your space, definitely helps keep the audience engaged. I think that builds your confidence, too, having an engaged audience, not staring out into a crowded room of people that are looking at their phones or glazing over as you mentioned.

I think it’s great to think about a tech and a nurse audience as an approach to building yourself to your own peers. They love the information that we can provide. It’s a great way to educate your team. It’s a great way to engage with them and it’s like a nice stepping stone to that larger podium presence, if you will, or spotlight. I think starting locally, we heard little messaging about that, locally, whether it’s in your region or in your city or in your own hospital, and then around grand rounds or tumor boards or multidisciplinary conferences, we’ll engage with questions that I think even if you’re just doing tumor board, which isn’t the same as a podium presentation, all of that, I think informs how you’re better at the podium or engaging with questions that may come up. Because those types of clinical questions or scenarios come up frequently in day-to-day or week-to-week practice are the kinds of things that prepare you well for how to manage the sorts of questions and follow up that you might get on the podium.

I think those are great points. I think that the thing that I remember early on was trying to be the expert in something and overdoing my slide deck for what I had, whether it was an hour presentation or I would say more and more these days meetings are looking at much shorter presentations, 8 to 10 minutes. The slide deck’s got to be much tighter and much narrower in focus, and you’re not going to be able to give the full detailed breadth of a specific topic. I don’t know how you managed that scenario with the techs and nurses, Jason, what did you recognize? At what point did you like, “Hey, I think I missed the mark here”? Was it way afterwards or was there something you were seeing that tipped you off?

Yeah, it was quite early in the talk, right? And I could tell I just lost the room. They were— Eyes were glazed over, and I could see people start yawning. And so, I tried to pivot and change the direction and change the communication style and really drive home small points here and there, right? To your point, nowadays, talks are 10 minutes or so. I think you really have to think ahead of what you want to impart on the audience and have one or two teaching points and perhaps have a smaller focus. And along with that, have a slide deck that isn’t too busy, so maybe three or four bullets per slide with some images.

Kaila, you’ve given really polished presentations, but it takes time to get to that point, right? So, how do you determine, what I want to include or what I don’t want to include in a tight talk that’s got a otherwise broad focus or broad disease state that you’re tasked with?

Sure. So, I mean, I’ll often start out with throwing everything. It’s like throwing the spaghetti at the wall and seeing what sticks. So, I don’t start building a talk with a cut number of slides. Maybe I know in my mind I want it to be 10 or 12, but I put all my thoughts out there or even just jot down notes. How do I want to map out what this talk is going to be? And then it’s easier to I think reel it in and say, “Okay, this is a good point. That’s probably too much.” And whether you’re using PowerPoint or other applications, I’ll do a lot of the practice with the timer on to say, okay, where am I going with this? What’s the natural flow? Is it going to be too much or too little and narrow it down as I go.

I do that a lot, too. So, I end up with a massive slide deck, and then I whittle it down to 25% or something small. And I’m like, what am I doing with all these slides that aren’t necessarily polished, but they’ve got a lot of content in them. And what I’ve found over time and recognized was that all of that content that it didn’t present is knowledge gain that’s in your mind, prepared to probably answer follow-up questions that may come up at the podium or on panel, and it’s available to you for clarification if it’s needed. So, you don’t have to share it all with the audience up front. Oftentimes, it’ll come out or an opportunity to elicit that knowledge through, as I said, panel discussions or questions that may come related to your talk because frequently that’s what’s happening is people are following along.

There may be some gaps, intentionally so because there’s only so much time, but that opportunity to then share that because of that preparation you did in advance with 50 slides that got narrowed down to just 10 or 12, that’s not wasted knowledge. It’s just stuff that you’re not sharing up front, but you have available to you if there’s a follow-up question. I found that to be really helpful indirectly. And then the second point that you shared, timing yourself, practicing with the timer on and saying, “Okay, what are my transitions going to be?”

Slides are awesome. They’re there to help direct the audience, maybe their eyes or what you’re talking about, but really what’s the transitions and what are the things you’re going to say that aren’t on the slides that help connect the dots between slides and your overall message that you want to convey to the very end, I think are great points. And you can do that with practice, right? I mean, that’s no-brainer for someone who’s coming new to this, whether it’s a first-time abstract presentation to an opportunity to join a seasoned group of a faculty on a panel at a national meeting. So, I think those are great takeaways.

I was just going to say, I don’t think the extra— The too-long slide deck, it’s not time lost either because maybe what’s a 10-minute talk or an 8-minute talk at SIR this year is a 30- or 45-minute similar talk that you get asked to present at a different conference. And it’s easier when you already have those slides made to put it back together.

So, I think those were some really great teaching points there, Parag. And I think at least for me, and you guys can share your experiences, but giving the talk can be very anxiety-provoking, but early career and even now, when the audience asks questions because it’s an unknown what they’re going to ask is just as stressful or more stressful. And it sounds like you may have left intentionally some gaps so that you can anticipate the questions that are going to be asked, and that’s very helpful for sure.

Absolutely. I think trainees can forget about that occasionally. The thing you control most is your talk and your talk track and your slide deck because it’s timed and it’s fixed, it’s 8 minutes, it’s 10 minutes, it’s a specific topic. But invariably, all of these sessions at a national stage will have follow-up questions that are now, that’s the unknown, right? And so you’ve prepared yourself because of the talk. And Kaila, to your point, I have, almost invariably, I have two versions of a talk. The original one, the draft version, which has all of these slides, and then the final version, which is the polished one for that one talk, which is the whittled-down version. But all those other slides are going to be potentially used at the next time or a variation of that talk or a slightly different angle, and now I’ve got something else to draw from, which is kind of nice.

You have a master slide deck, and you work from there, particularly if it’s an area of personal interest or focus. Those are never wasted efforts. Another thing I think about a lot, particularly early on in my career, was who was I seeing as a trainee coming up, whether it was a program director, a faculty member, someone on the national stage, who just did it well, who seemed always polished. Jason, you mentioned folks from training or giving a talk early on with luminaries, so to speak, in the field. We’ve all had experiences with that, probably personal or that you’ve seen or witnessed, whether it’s a local or national meeting. Have you had— Can you comment on mentors or people that you tried to emulate or respected and said, “Hey, I’d love to be a little bit of that when I’m up on the stage?”

Sure. So, being Canadian, right? I get to see Lindsay Machan speak quite a bit, and he’s obviously very knowledgeable, but he’s entertaining when he delivers the content and engages the audience. So, I think that that’s helpful, is trying to have that energy and something I try and copy.

He’s pretty funny, and I think you’re doing a good job of trying to balance that yourself. How about you, Kaila? We don’t have a lot of women in the field, and that’s something we all can do better at, but at the same time, are you modeling a style? Is that matter? Is that something that was like, “Hey, I don’t have a lot of that,” or there is particular people I wanted to see how they carried themselves.

I mean, style definitely matters, and I think you want to match a style that’s similar to yours. If you aren’t somebody that can land a joke, then probably injecting humor into your talk isn’t going to go over very well. I, as you know, tend to favor dark humor, which it’s another, you have to know your audience sort of style. So, I don’t always put that into the national meetings the way I would with some of our local groups that know me personally. When I think about the bigger stage and some personal mentors I’ve had locally that hit the national stage, like you, obviously, Sarah White, another one of our partners. I think Sarah gives really compelling talks, and she’s really passionate when she speaks. And I think she always has a captive audience just because of the passion that she injects into her presentation.

Yeah, it’s a great point.

And there are other women in IR, as you mentioned at other institutions, I have a similar style. Amy Taylor, Nikki Keefe, I think they all have that focus and passion that makes her talks engaging and interesting.

Those are great folks to model after, super experienced and also rising stars for sure. I think that the point of be yourself, you can have a ton of adulation or praise for a speaker who just lands it every time, but if that’s not your style, it’s really, really difficult to try to emulate that. So, you can respect something— someone who’s really funny and can tie in their humor and seems to always connect, but you probably need to have some self-recognition if that’s your style or not. For me personally, I think if I know my audience or I’ve been in a place for a while, I can probably land a joke here and there, but ultimately, I’m kind of just keeping it buttoned up and straight with a more direct message probably than say a Lindsay or Jason. Because I think you do a pretty good job, Jason, of trying to land humor. Maybe it’s just your style.

Well, thanks for that.

What do you think early-career IRs who want to get on the podium, let’s say, and this is really intended for trainees and early careers, what’s the path to doing that? What are some tips for those who are listening who are saying, “Hey, gosh, I’d love to be able to join any one of these three on a panel next year.” How are they going to do that? What’s the path to getting that invite or making yourself relevant in a space? Is it social media? Is it something you do locally? Is it a particular— What is it? What would you say are some tips for someone who’s trying to get into the field, early career, still fairly broad, but wants to work in an area? What might we share with them? I’ve got a few thoughts.

So, I think we all know that the IR community’s pretty small, right? And there’s a lot of, I think, networking to be gained from attending national meetings or even regional meetings. I think just reaching out and getting your name out there, putting on a brave face and introducing yourself at all of these sort of happy hours and social events that they have at the meetings, and just networking and making yourself known in that way is the first way to get your foot in the door.

I get introduced or people come up to me all the time at meetings and will recognize or reintroduce themselves from a time they interviewed or met me at a meeting the year prior. And I’m actually always happy to meet those folks and hear a little bit about their story or what’s interesting them, because typically it’s an area of similar interests, whether it’s a clinical talk or a topic that I’m engaging on just usually coming off the podium or at the end of a session. It’s those people that I often will start to think about as I’m organizing, meeting, planning, and otherwise who’s new, early career, because invariably we’ve got the in-depth talks, research-focused or expertise, but then there’s the background talks and overview of the disease or what area I’m focusing on that I’d love to get a new person in the field introduced to, particularly if they’re truly in it.

My concern is always are they in that space? Are they just looking to be on the podium? As a meeting organizer who oftentimes is trying to develop a program, I want people who are invested in that and as opposed to people who have just shown me a presence because of say, social media, which I think is an amazing tool for education and for communication, but it doesn’t always relate to expertise. And so, for me, I’m always like, “Okay, you’re in this space.”

“You came to the meeting.” That says a lot more than just having seen you only on, say TikTok. Nothing against that, but I think I want to see all of it, right? I want to see you in that venue, but then you’re at the meetings listening to what’s going on because you’re engaging in that content because it’s relevant to your practice for your patients. I don’t know what your thoughts are on other ways to reach out there, Jason. You trained in the States, you’ve been in Canada for a while now. You’ve become well-established, but early on, you weren’t a known entity. What’d you do to make sure you reached out or maybe you had some sponsorship or help along the way?

Yeah, I think meeting people, networking are all very important things. I think the other thing that can be done is just getting involved with the societies, right? So, there’s lots of opportunities to volunteer with the SIR and through that, naturally, you’re just going to meet more people and these people can help get you to the podium. They can see that you’re engaged, that you actually care, and that you know the material. So, I think that that’s a good way to get to the podium as well.

Your network expands with the work that you do. Volunteer committee work in your societies, whether it’s SIR or CAIR or other specialty— subspecialty organizations at your hospital or nationally, creates a network and a connection that goes beyond the more formal meeting environment. You work on a project together, and you move things forward. You create a connection, and then you also get an understanding of what they’re in. We’ve all, probably, have colleagues around the country, for that matter maybe even around the globe, and you know their areas of expertise and some of which overlap with you, and when they’re thinking about programming or otherwise, they understand now better what a Kaila Redifer does or Jason Wong does. Because not necessarily being at a meeting, but because of the work they did on a committee, whether it’s economics or guideline development or within a clinical space. Huge area of opportunity for young careers to put your name out there and get involved in a way that’s just a little bit of given your time and not a ton of on-the-spot expertise, like a podium presentation.

So, I think that’s another a great point. Another piece is getting involved in research, putting yourself out there with the work that you’ve done, whether it’s a clinical trial or your own experience with a small group of patients in that particular space, and presenting that. You mentioned, Kaila, being a medical student, presenting at a vascular surgery meeting. Obviously, you’re an interventional radiologist, you could have gone either route, but that’s daunting for any specialty, a trainee to be in that room. But that’s how you get yourself out there, and you continue that as an early career and then before you know it, you’re being asked to give talks and frankly you’re on the “meeting circuit.” So I think those are great things. I know we’re coming towards the end here. I think there’s some great insight here from both of you. Maybe as we wrap it up, maybe what are some top action steps or things you might tell the listeners to help strengthen their path or their own path to the podium? Anything you want to close with or suggest as opportunities for our listeners?

I think as we touched on, start local, start regionally, and then find topics that align with your interest and your passion. So, you kind of loosely touched on it with our last point of discussion there. Not all important topics are academic or clinical. There are economic topics, there are people doing really great work out in the community building OBLs, private practices, people whose interests lie in women in IR, DEI, all the soft skills and things like that. And so I think finding an area that you’re passionate about, whether or not you are an academic IR and starting local and building from there.

Yeah, I think there’s so much in IR. Just find your passion. It’s always easier to talk about things that you’re passionate about, and then getting involved leads to lots of different opportunities. And lastly, just know your audience and probably less is more with the talk and it just opens up discussion and future talks of things that people would be interested in.

Great points. I’ll add as the senior folk on this podcast is that use your mentors. They want to see you succeed, they want to and will be more than happy to sponsor you. Create your network of peers, but also mentors that are internal to your perhaps organization and also external. Those connections and introductions can go a long way, but you have to steward them, stay connected and involved in ways that are impactful. Some of those outside mentors may be in some of that volunteer work that we referenced earlier. And so, small connections and maintained, sustained connections that go a long way with creating you as a known entity as you move up through your career. But I think great points all around. I want to thank Jason and Kaila for joining me today at the Cook@ SIR podcast. I want to thank Cook for hosting this on our behalf and look forward to seeing everyone at the meeting in Toronto.

Thanks.

Thank you.