Leather bindings and scary politics - Tuesday August 3rd

Attended my first American MDT meeting today, known in local parlance as "tumor board". For the uninitiated, an MDT or multi-diciplinary-team meeting is a forum for discussion of patients with cancer, which allows doctors from a range of specialties to discuss and (hopefully) agree on an appropriate treatment strategy. These days interventional radiologists play a fairly central role in both the diagnosis and treatment of many different tumours so I will spend a lot of my working life in these meetings.

The format for the meeting was very similar to the UK, although the coffee was much better, but what I was really struck by was the setting for the meeting - a vast wood paneled library shelved floor to ceiling in leather bound books and journals. The staff doctors all sat in huge leather chairs and quoted "the latest research" at one another.

There seems to be a real fondness here for old fashioned academia and all the associated paraphernalia. I've noticed that at European meetings you are simply awarded a distinction for your presentation/poster but in America you are awarded Magna Cum Laude or some similar tripe. Similarly, American students have endless formal graduations and join college fraternities and sororities with Latin names. It all seems to be an odd contradiction from a country that usually wants to distance itself from its European roots.

On the subject of which, I spent most of today watching cases from the control room because the interventionists were doing radio-embolisation and the hospital radiation control officer wouldn't let me in the room. As a result I got chatting to the "rad techs" (radiographers) who are all friendly guys but politically just a little bit right wing. They started with a bit of Obama-bashing, then a rant on illegal immigration but after their grievances on British Petroleum and Libyan (alleged) bombers we were soon on to the perceived state of the UK. "Is it true that Britain is being taken over by Muslims?"

Scary stuff.

I might cancel that canoeing trip this weekend.

"Is it true that Britain is being taken over by Muslims?"