BU Research Blog

A lot of people think of poster presentations at conferences as being a “waste of time” and “never read” but being able to condense a lot of information into a limited amount of space while still making it engaging for people reading the poster can have a lot of impact.

Lisa Gale-Andrews and Helen Allen from Bournemouth University Clinical Research Unit prepared a poster on the involvement of patients and members of the public in developing a grant application. It was presented at the NCCPE Engage 2015 conference in December.

Now imagine their surprise when, almost 2 months later, the NIHR Director for Patient and Public Involvement in Research highlighted the poster (and subsequent publication of the work in Research Involvement and Engagement) as a “good learning tool for others” in his Blog. The Blog was then tweeted to his 3413 followers.

Helen at Engage 2015

As a result, the poster is going to be shared at various patient, public involvement and engagement training sessions. All that impact from one conference poster! So keep that in mind the next time you’re “only doing a poster”.