A TED talk about Prognosis

​While I was in my medical oncology training at the University of Manitoba I met a lot of wonderful people - including patients, and their friends and family -  who were dealing with the life threatening and terrifying diagnosis of cancer.

For most people, facing the reality of death and dying is not something that happens every day. Watching and learning from the patients that I was in contact with taught me a lot about life, and made me think about what is important to me on a daily basis. It also made me think about what I would want to have happen and be told if I was facing cancer or any other life threatening diagnosis.

This TEDxManitoba presentation was a few years ago, and at the time I wanted to connect with the public about the topic of prognosis, specifically regarding death. In preparation for the talk I sent out an online survey asking people if they would want to know when they were going to die. The responses I got were amazing and not only helped me build the talk, but they also helped guide my practice by gaining insight into what is important to people. The challenge is: how do physicians, researchers, and clinicians determine what information is important to which patients and share it in a way that is useful.

I think sharing information including prognosis, can be done in a number of ways, depending on the patient. In the talk I used a couple of different strategies in the - humor, statistics, quotes from the survey respondents and incorporating the brilliant artist, Dianne Conrad. In the clinical context, not all of these are appropriate or practical. But in the presentation format it was really exciting to sharing my perspective on a topic that is important to me with the public using a number of different strategies, and I hope by using the different tools that I did, my message was able to connect with a wider audience.

I had a great time putting the talk together, working with my amazing Tedx mentor - Mary Anne Issak - meeting the other presenters and the hardworking and dedicated organizers.

Four years later, after practicing independently as a physician and completing my masters work, my perspective on sharing prognosis and its importance continues to evolve. I sometimes wonder what I would change in this Tedx talk if I were to give it again, but I am certainly proud of the steps I took through this presentation to be part of the important conversation about what people want to know regarding end-of-life and in bringing a topic that clinicians struggle with into the public eye.