Preparing Teaching Materials and Grand Round Slides

The Problem

You are presenting a grand round on the management of adrenal incidentalomas next month. Or running a lunchtime teaching session for foundation doctors on interpreting thyroid function tests. Or preparing a structured case presentation for a multi-disciplinary team meeting.

You know the material. The challenge is not the content — it is the time it takes to translate what you know into a structured, logical teaching document. A clear introduction, the right amount of background, well-ordered learning points, a case to anchor it. All of that takes hours of drafting, reorganising, and editing that you often do in the evenings.

How AI Helps

AI can help you move from "I know what I want to say" to "I have a draft to work from" much faster. Give it a topic, a target audience, a duration, and any specific points you want to cover, and ask it for a structured outline. You then edit the outline to match your thinking, and use it as your scaffolding.

You can also ask it to draft slide-by-slide talking points, produce a list of common misconceptions in the area, or generate quiz questions for interactive teaching.

A Real Example

Dr Chen is preparing a thirty-minute teaching session for core medical trainees on thyroid function test interpretation. She asks the AI:

"Create an outline for a 30-minute teaching session for core medical trainees on interpreting thyroid function tests. Topics to cover: what TSH and free T4 actually measure, the five most common patterns they will see and what each suggests, the most common errors in interpretation, and two brief case examples. Include learning objectives at the start. Plain language, clinical focus. No specific drug doses or treatment protocols."

The AI produces a clean outline with four sections, six learning objectives, and two brief anonymised cases. Dr Chen spends twenty minutes reviewing it, reorders two sections, adds a specific local case she has seen, and removes one learning objective she feels is too advanced for the audience.

She then asks the AI to produce talking points for each slide, and uses those as her speaker notes.

What might have taken three hours of evening prep takes forty-five minutes.

Try It Yourself

Create an outline for a {{session_length}}-minute teaching session for {{audience}} on {{topic}}. 

Please include:
- 3–5 clear learning objectives
- A logical section structure with headings
- Key teaching points for each section (bullet form)
- One or two brief anonymised case examples to anchor the teaching
- Two or three common errors or misconceptions to address

No specific drug names, doses, or treatment algorithms. Clinical and practical focus.

Do not use real patient cases. Ask the AI to generate fictional teaching cases, or create your own anonymised examples separately.

Things to Watch For

Check clinical accuracy carefully for teaching materials. You are presenting to learners. If the AI draft contains a subtly incorrect statement about physiology or clinical interpretation, it will be repeated by the people in your session. Read teaching content more critically than you would a personal draft.

AI does not know your local protocols. Statements like "the usual next step is..." may not match your department's pathways. Add local context yourself.

Cases should be genuinely anonymised or fictional. Do not paste real case details into AI tools, even for teaching purposes. Ask the AI to generate a fictional case matching the scenario you need.

Slide design is not included. AI produces text. The visual layout of slides still requires your tool of choice (PowerPoint, Keynote, and similar). The AI helps with structure and content, not design.

Remember: AI is a helpful assistant, not a clinician. You make the call.