PUFF Guide to written and oral communication

An important role for the professional pharmacist and dispensing pharmacist is to communicate with the public, colleagues, healthcare professionals and others in such a way that the information reaches out and becomes understandable. This requires good subject knowledge and also a good ability to express and convey your knowledge in Swedish and English, and be able to adapt the presentation to the recipient's level of knowledge.

At the Faculty of Pharmacy, we argue that "expressing yourself in good Swedish and English" means that the message is understandable to a recipient with no further experience of the current situation.

Written and oral reports of laboratory exercises, PM’s and other parts of the programme’s courses should give you an exercise in communication. The PUFF Guide to written and oral communication is a step-by-step guide to improving your written and oral presentation skills during the programme. In the document, you will find, among other things, information and advice on text disposition and reference handling, oral presentations, opposition and reports after course labs.

A scientific study is not complete until the results are published. It can be done in the form of an article in a scientific journal but also as scientific and popular essays, reports, lectures and posters. Studies in an area also need to be summarised and discussed in a broader perspective for the knowledge to be useful.

All presentations are made to convey a message. Therefore, you present from the recipient's perspective: How should you arouse and maintain the interest of the recipient and how should you describe your results so that the recipient understands? The presentations will therefore look different to different target groups. It is important to consider which target group is intended when you prepare the presentation.

Your presentation must be your own. You describe your results and discuss them in your own words. When you summarise what others have done, for example in the introduction and discussion, you use your own words, indicating the source of your information. Copying text without specifying the source is considered plagiarism. Even if you specify the source, you must not transcribe more than a single sentence (within quotation marks), and otherwise express the information in your own words.

You can read a detailed description here of how to use sources and what is considered cheating and plagiarism.

Further reading

• Papers and reports
  • Title
  • Table of contents
  • Abstract
  • Introduction and aims
  • Materials and methods
  • Results
  • Discussion and conclusions
  • Acknowledgements
  • Citing your sources in the text
  • Appendices, tables and figures
  • Formatting, grammar and spelling

• Literature reviews
• Popular science papers
• Posters
• Advice for oral presentations
• Oral presentations with slides
• Suggested reading
• Peer reviewing – some advice
• Checklist for Master and Bachelor theses

• Feedback written component
• Feedback oral component
• Template for laboratory reports

Download the Guide to Written and Oral Communication