Sixty meetings of psychiatric teams at ten different wards of a 650 bed psychiatric hospital were observed. A 'meeting chart' was used to record chronologically the proceedings during a clinical or stafforiented meeting. With an additional form the relative contribution of each teammember towards the total time and interaction of the meeting was studied. The meetings are considered essential for the progress work on the wards and are so common that only at lunchtime none take place. This implies a lesser availability of the staffmembers for the world outside the hospital. The findings illuminated some problems relating to the wide variety of different concepts and policies of the various teammembers: a smalt proportion of the meeting-time is spent on discussion about the functioning of patients outside the hospital in contrast to large proportions on wardbehavior. This is a worthwile observation in view of comments often made nowadays concerning that psychiatric hospitals are preoccupied with inside hospital aspects, ignoring social and family influences.