ABSTRACT
For some situations – advanced metastatic cancer or “non-surgical” cancer, such as lymphoma – the medical oncologist is clearly the lead specialist, or is the only specialist involved. For many other situations the medical oncologist is part of a multidisciplinary group including surgeons, radiation oncologists, gynaecologists, etc. This applies to many of the common epithelial carcinomas, e.g. breast, colorectal, lung and ovarian cancer, but also to rarer diseases such as sarcomas and malignant melanoma. Multidisciplinary care is now recognised as the gold standard for these situations, but with the added value of combining surgery, radiation and medical treatment and expertise comes the additional complexity of explaining management in an appropriate and coherent way. Your role as the physician in this potentially complex grouping is key to ensuring that patients gain confidence and know who their doctors are. If attention is not paid to this, the patient may feel that they are merely pieces in a complex jigsaw and feel dispossessed. I return to the concept of who is responsible for explaining what and when later, but first let us deal with the basics of explaining medical anti-cancer treatment.
