Royal College of Emergency Medicine
Emergency Medicine
Emergency-medicine audits and QI do well here. Illustrative dates.
Presentations
Conferences & reusable poster ideas
Presenting is portfolio gold — and the smart move is to build one solid project and present it at several meetings. Below: upcoming conferences that take student abstracts, and project ideas designed to be reused across many of them.
Upcoming conferences
Royal Society of Medicine
General
Accessible first conference for students; poster prizes awarded. Illustrative dates.
British Geriatrics Society
GeriatricsGeneral
Undergraduate abstracts welcomed; good for QI and audit work. Illustrative dates.
Academy of Medical Sciences (INSPIRE)
ResearchGeneral
Showcase for undergraduate research; welcoming to first posters. Illustrative dates.
Association of Surgeons in Training
SurgeryOrthopaedicsUrology
Large surgical-trainee meeting with strong student poster and oral categories. Dates illustrative — confirm on the conference site.
Association for Palliative Medicine
Palliative Care
Welcoming to student audits and service evaluations. Illustrative dates.
British Society for Rheumatology
Rheumatology
Undergraduate poster category. Illustrative dates.
Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health
Paediatrics
Paediatric posters and cases; student stream. Illustrative dates.
Association of British Neurologists
Neurology
Neurology cases and research; competitive but prestigious. Illustrative dates.
British Cardiovascular Society
Cardiology
Large cardiology meeting with moderated poster sessions. Illustrative dates.
Royal College of Psychiatrists
Psychiatry
Student and trainee poster categories. Illustrative dates.
British Association of Urological Surgeons
UrologySurgery
Urology posters and moderated sessions. Illustrative dates.
Society for Academic Primary Care
General PracticeResearch
The home of academic primary-care work; friendly to first posters. Illustrative dates.
Association for the Study of Medical Education
Medical EducationGeneral
The home for medical-education projects and near-peer teaching evaluations. Illustrative dates.
Poster & project ideas you can reuse
Each of these is designed to travel: do the work once, then present it at several of the conferences above with a re-angled abstract. That's how strong applicants build a wall of presentations without starting over each time.
Audit
Medium effort
Audit of antibiotic prescribing against local guidelines
Compare a sample of antibiotic prescriptions (indication, choice, duration, review date) against the trust/antimicrobial guideline, then re-audit after feeding back to prescribers.
Reuse it at:
Microbiology / infection meetingsGP and acute-medicine conferencesAntimicrobial-stewardship eventsStudent conferences
💡 Antimicrobial stewardship is a national priority, so almost every conference has an angle for it.
Case Report
Low effort
Case report: an instructive presentation of a common condition
Write up a single patient whose presentation teaches a transferable lesson (an atypical presentation, a diagnostic pitfall, a management dilemma). Get patient consent early.
Reuse it at:
Nearly every specialty conference has a case/poster categoryJournal case-report sectionsStudent conferences
💡 Lowest-effort entry point to a first poster. Written once, the same case fits whichever specialty's conference it best illustrates.
Audit
Medium effort
Closed-loop audit of VTE risk assessment on admission
Audit whether admitted patients get a documented venous-thromboembolism risk assessment within 24 hours, feed back to the team, then re-audit after a simple intervention (a sticker, a proforma prompt, a teaching session).
Reuse it at:
Any specialty conference (every ward admits patients)Trust/local audit meetingStudent & foundation conferencesPatient-safety meetings
💡 Closed-loop (re-audit showing improvement) scores far higher than a one-off snapshot. The same dataset re-framed fits a surgical, medical or GP audience.
Review
High effort
Focused systematic review / scoping review of a narrow question
Pick a tightly-scoped question, follow PRISMA, and summarise the evidence. No patients or ethics approval needed, so it's doable entirely around placements.
Reuse it at:
Research conferences (INSPIRE)The relevant specialty's conferenceStudent conferencesPublication as a review
💡 Keep the question narrow or it balloons. A good review is reusable as both a poster and a paper.
Qi
Medium effort
Frailty screening on acute admission — service evaluation
Evaluate whether older patients admitted acutely get a documented frailty score (e.g. Clinical Frailty Scale), what proportion are flagged, and whether a sticker or e-prompt improves it.
Reuse it at:
BGS and geriatrics meetingsAcute & general medicine conferencesQI meetingsStudent conferences
💡 Frailty is everywhere in acute medicine, so this travels from a geriatrics audience to an acute-medicine or QI one with a light re-title.
Teaching
Medium effort
Near-peer teaching programme with before/after evaluation
Design and deliver a short teaching series to junior students, measure confidence/knowledge before and after with a simple validated-style questionnaire, and report the change.
Reuse it at:
ASME and education streamsAny specialty conference's education categoryStudent conferences
💡 One programme yields a poster, an oral, and often a prize — education categories are less crowded than clinical ones.
Audit
Medium effort
Penicillin allergy de-labelling audit
Audit how many inpatients carry an unverified 'penicillin allergy' label, the antibiotics they receive as a result, and whether a structured allergy history could safely remove it. Re-audit after introducing a prompt.
Reuse it at:
Infection / microbiology meetingsAntimicrobial-stewardship eventsPatient-safety & QI conferencesStudent conferences
💡 A hot topic in stewardship, so it lands at infection, safety and general-medicine meetings alike — one audit, several abstracts.
Qi
Medium effort
QI project: improving discharge-summary completeness
Measure how many discharge summaries include the key items (diagnosis, medication changes, follow-up, GP actions), run a PDSA cycle with a template or checklist, and show the change over time on a run chart.
Reuse it at:
GP and general-medicine conferencesQI-specific meetingsPatient-safety eventsStudent & foundation conferences
💡 A run chart across a few PDSA cycles is the money shot for QI judges. The GP-continuity angle makes it a primary-care poster too.
Qi
Medium effort
Service evaluation of clinic did-not-attend (DNA) rates
Quantify DNA rates for a clinic, look for patterns (age, distance, appointment type), and propose or trial a low-cost intervention such as an SMS reminder.
Reuse it at:
Public-health and primary-care conferencesQI meetingsThe host specialty's conferenceStudent conferences
💡 No ethics approval needed for a service evaluation — a fast route to data. Reframe the same numbers for a public-health or a specialty audience.
Audit
Medium effort
WHO Surgical Safety Checklist compliance audit
Observe or review whether all three parts of the WHO checklist are completed in theatre, quantify compliance, and re-audit after a prompt or poster intervention.
Reuse it at:
ASiT and surgical-society meetingsAnaesthetics meetingsPatient-safety / QI conferencesStudent conferences
💡 Get the theatre lead on side early. Works as a surgical poster AND a patient-safety poster with a re-titled abstract.
Conference dates and abstract deadlines are illustrative starter data — always confirm on the conference's own site before planning around them. Project ideas are starting points; scope every project with your supervisor and get ethics/consent where needed.