What is meant by a specialty clinic or multidisciplinary team?
Patients are scheduled in one of the specialty or multidisciplinary cancer care clinics based a number of factors such as the type of service needed-diagnostic, initial treatment planning, the type and stage of cancer age-adult or pediatric cancer, etc. A multidisciplinary team consists of cancer specialists from diverse disciplines including surgery, medical oncology, radiation oncology, radiology, pathology, and for some diagnoses, other subspecialties. Teams also include health professionals such as nurses, social workers, physical therapists, registered dietitians and pharmacists. The goal is to provide thorough, accurate, and prompt evaluation for patients as early as possible following the diagnosis of cancer. One or more of the team physicians evaluates each patient. The team then comes together to discuss individual patient needs and develop a personalized treatment plan that takes into account all aspects of care – everything from prescribing the most appropriate tests or ther
