180 Copyright © 2016 by the Academy of Sciences and Arts of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Information retention among attendees at a traditional poster presentation session Adam K. Saperstein 1 , Robert P. Lennon 2 , Cara Olsen 3 , Luke Womble 4 , Aaron Saguil 5 Letter to the editor Acta Medica Academica 2016;45(2):180-181 DOI: 10.5644/ama2006-124.178 Dear Editor, Medical poster presentations provide an interactive opportunity to share work at conferences with limited podium space (1). Tere is scarce data evaluating how efective- ly medical poster presentations facilitate at- tendees’ retention of medical knowledge (2). We performed an IRB exempt pilot study to investigate how well attendees retained in- formation presented in medical posters. Four poster presenters at the 2013 Soci- ety of Teachers of Family Medicine (STFM) Annual Spring Conference were invited to participate in our study. Each presenter identifed the central theme and the top two “take home points” for their poster. Confer- ence attendees were invited to participate; those who consented were given a map showing the location of the four posters and asked to view them in the manner they nor- mally view posters. Tree and ninety days afer the confer- ence, participants were sent an electronic survey asking about basic demographic in- formation, participants’ engagement with the posters, and information retention. We expected learners to retain at least 30% of information conveyed via a medical poster, based on the National Training Laboratory Institute for Applied Behavioral Science’s “Learning Pyramid” (3). Twenty-six attendees responded at both 3 and 90 days with a mean retention of 14.9% and 11.3% respectively. Te most common reason reported for attending the poster pre- sentation session was “to learn new informa- tion.” Information retention was associated with interaction with poster presenters for only 1 of the 4 posters. No associations be- tween gender, age, primary reason for attend- ing the poster presentation session, current position or history of having presented post- ers in the past and information retention were found. Te decline was higher in males and in those further removed from their residency. Although there are many potential ben- efts of poster presentations at conferences, 1 Department of Family Medicine, Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences Bethesda, Maryland, 2 Department of Family Medicine, Naval Hospital Jacksonville, Jacksonville Florida, 3 Department of Preventive Medicine and Biostatistics, Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences, Bethesda, Maryland, 4 Department of Family Medicine, Naval Hospital Camp Pendleton Camp Pendleton, California, 5 Department of Family Medicine, Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences, Bethesda, Maryland. Correspondence: robert.lennon@med.navy.mil Tel.: + 904 588 2621; Fax.: + 904 542 7394 Received: 8 June 2016; Accepted: 15 August 2016 Key words: Medical education ■ Retention ■ Conferences.