HOW TO PRESENT YOUR HISTORY WITH CONFIDENCE

HOW TO PRESENT YOUR HISTORY WITH CONFIDENCE

BY SULEIMAN NDORO JNR (DR AUDI)

Ask yourself, what do I fear most? Is it death, scorpions, poverty or disease? Your answer may lie in those four options mentioned above or may not. But do you know what the number one fear for human beings is? It does not lie in the ones mentioned above. Yes, not even death.

The number one of the fourteen worst human fears is speaking before a group. And I think, the larger the group, the more intense is the fear.

Well, as a medical student, speaking before a group is inevitable. In the clinical years, speaking before a group becomes the norm of the day.

You've always been filled with stress, tension, fear, self-consciousness and nervousness at the same time before presenting your history? It happens. And I won’t lie to you, it happened to me many times. 

Well, the good news is that I have a mild solution for it. I tried it a few times and it worked well with me.

TIP 1      

Migrate from being self-conscious

“I am going to make an ass of myself in front of all these people.”  
“The lecturer is going to shout me and these people are going to laugh at me.” 

These are some of the questions that stress a lot of us when we are about to present our histories.

Well, the truth is that stress is a communication killer and once these thoughts get jammed into your brain, it becomes unhealthy presenting that history.

The number one tip and the tip we are going to discuss today is to shift the attention from yourself to the audience. 

Stop caring about yourself and what is going to happen to yourself and start caring about your audience – the consultant, the medical doctors, the nurses, the interns, your fellow students and even the patients.

What if your change your self-centred thoughts to statements like the ones below?

“These people are here to listen to me. “

They came here to listen to me and I shouldn’t disappoint them.”

 “The consultant wants me to succeed and I have to make this time that he’s listening to me valuable for him.”

During my rotations in the reproductive health department in Murang’a hospital is where I learnt about shifting my self-centred thoughts to those of the audience. I happened to be in the same ward rounds with my girlfriend and I used her as my main audience. When I was presenting my history, I thought about not letting her down and not making her a fool in front of the other people. I never wanted to disappoint her.

And when these thoughts eroded my cortex, I faked the confidence till I made it. When I presented my history, I could feel that everyone was listening to me due to the overwhelming silence. And when I completed presenting my history, people would congratulate and awe my confidence.  My classmates would even come for the paper I had written the history on to see what was on it.

I don’t mean to tell that you should make a new girlfriend or boyfriend in every clinical rotation.  Try it with a friend or even the patient you made connection with. Let the situation be like how you are trying to win yourself on your crush. Then care about them. It worked on me and I’m cocksure it’s going to work on you too.

Watch out for TIP 2 on how to presenting your history with confidence.

Suleiman Ndoro Jnr (Dr Audi) is a medical and motivational author who is a graduate of BSC Clinical Medicine from Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology (JKUAT). He is also the Founder and CEO of Medwax Corporation Africa Ltd; a medical and healthcare startup corporation based in Kenya.