Forty years of COSA - contributions to oncology teaching and research

From its beginnings, the essence of the Clinical Oncology Society of Australia (COSA) was its multidisciplinary approach to treating cancer. While the need for a cross or multi-disciplinary approach was eventually to be seen as obvious and essential, it required considerable effort to break the established pattern of the medical profession. Surgeons were used to meeting and talking with surgeons, radiation oncologists with radiation oncologists, and so on; the long-established medical societies and colleges tended to be single-discipline in their focus.