Morning report guidelines

The schedule for upcoming morning reports can be found here.

1)      25-30 slides is the right length to allow questions and discussion from the audience, participation from our great discussants, and enough time to teach.

2)      Confirm topics and teaching points with the corresponding Chief at least 1 week in advance of your report. If you’re struggling to find a case, think back to your own patients from the wards (it’s a good idea to keep a running list of interesting cases in Epic) or ask your co-residents. Remember, your case doesn’t have to be a “zebra” – there are plenty of great teaching points to be made about common diseases and presentations, too!

3)      To get an idea of what has been done for prior MRs, check the website. Click on the “Morning Report” tab on the left. These are updated weekly.

4)      Send your slides to the corresponding Chief at least 3 business days ahead of your report (e.g. by Monday morning if your report is Thursday, or by Wednesday morning if your report is Monday). If you turn in slides by this deadline, we guarantee you’ll have edits and suggestions with at least 24 hours to make changes.

5)      Slides should include focused differentials and teaching points, as opposed to copied-and-pasted UpToDate tables. Likewise, references should include the primary literature and should have a References slide at the end of your presentation.

6)     Use of interactive questions to stoke audience participation and discussion can be a great strategy. We use a web-based application called PollEverywhere and are happy to help you install polls into your slides if you like. We recommend using the “notes section” of your slides to add specific questions for the discussant or for the audience as you prepare your talk.

7)      We do keep track of all MRs per resident, so the total number will average out the same for everyone over second and third year (and fourth year for you MedPeds folks!).

8)     Your morning reports look better in 16:9. Make sure to resize your slides. See a tutorial here.