• Pharmacists prepare complicated medications and ensure correct dosages.
• Technologists make sure that breathing machines, chemotherapy pumps, home oxygen equipment and other
mechanical devices work properly at all times.
Direction As with any effective team, one person usually takes charge of the overall direction of the team's efforts. He or she is essentially the commander of the forces brought to bear on your cancer. He or she decides what "intelligence" information is needed, delegates specific tasks to the people best able to perform them, analyzes all the options and makes the key decisions. Most important, he or she is the one who reports to you on your situation. How do things look? What can be done? What are the risks? What are the odds? What are the alternatives?
In some cases, the overall direction will be the responsibility of your primary physician. But since cancer treatment is so complex and so many specialists may be called in at various times, direction is now more often in the hands of an oncologist . And because medical oncologists are also specialists in internal medicine, they often assume overall responsibility.
There are many advantages to this chain of command. Medical oncologists see many cancer patients and are knowledgeable about the effects and likely results of the most up-to-date treatments. Oncologists also tend to
