Multi Discipline

Every 2nd Tuesday I have to attend a multi-disciplinary team meeting in the morning. This just means lots of different specialists convene, can actually get along for long enough to discuss about management of patients with breast cancer.

There are the surgeons; they sit in the front row and chair the meeting.
They are forceful, speak in loud voices and are the primary doctor for the patients. The reason they have this meeting is for them to get advice from other specialists about how to further manage the patient (e.g. does the patient need chemotherapy after her mastectomy etc)

It's quite interesting because surgeons tend to be on the arrogant, know it all fence and it must be quite a difficult thing to accept advice from a "mere" physician. Sometimes some tension happens when they disagree; or when they're not quite happy with pathology not having slides available for them etc.

There are the medical oncologists (cancer specialists) sitting on the sidelines.
They offer opinions based on the case and sit back with the quiet realisation that the surgeons need them.

There are the pathologists who sit in the back with their microscope and histology slides.
Can a job get any boring than this?? Usually after the surgeon has removed the cancer, they send it to the pathologist to analyse under the microscope. So the pathologist has painstakingly prepared a slide of histology specimens for the meeting, of which they describe at the meeting in really fast tones (as if they're sorta aware that no one is actually listening). 

There is one radiologist who stands at the podium controlling the computer and explaining the imaging.
He goes through the imaging really quickly as if everyone understands what's he is talking about.

The others are meeting secretaries, breast care nurses, intern (me!) and my medical student.
We all are the silent attenders. I  try my best to participate physically in the meeting even though mentally I am elsewhere or playing with my iPhone. If I actually know the patients they're talking about; then I perk up and listen because it's interesting. If not...then zzzzzzzzzz.