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. 2018 Apr 5;18(1):249.
doi: 10.1186/s12913-018-2990-4.

Benefits, barriers and opinions on multidisciplinary team meetings: a survey in Swedish cancer care

Linn Rosell  1   2 , Nathalie Alexandersson  2 , Oskar Hagberg  2 , Mef Nilbert  3   4   5
Affiliations

Benefits, barriers and opinions on multidisciplinary team meetings: a survey in Swedish cancer care

Linn Rosell et al. BMC Health Serv Res. .

Abstract

Background: Case review and discussion at multidisciplinary team meetings (MDTMs) have evolved into standard practice in cancer care with the aim to provide evidence-based treatment recommendations. As a basis for work to optimize the MDTMs, we investigated participants' views on the meeting function, including perceived benefits and barriers.

Methods: In a cross-sectional study design, 244 health professionals from south Sweden rated MDTM meeting structure and function, benefits from these meetings and barriers to reach a treatment recommendation.

Results: The top-ranked advantages from MDTMs were support for patient management and competence development. Low ratings applied to monitoring patients for clinical trial inclusion and structured work to improve the MDTM. Nurses and cancer care coordinators did less often than physicians report involvement in the case discussions. Major benefits from MDTM were reported to be more accurate treatment recommendations, multidisciplinary evaluation and adherence to clinical guidelines. Major barriers to a joint treatment recommendation were reported to be need for supplementary investigations and insufficient pathology reports.

Conclusions: Health professionals' report multiple benefits from MDTMs, but also define areas for improvement, e.g. access to complete information and clarified roles for the different health professions. The emerging picture suggests that structures for regular MDTM evaluations and increased focus on patient-related perspectives should be developed and implemented.

Keywords: Cross-sectional study; Health care survey; Multidisciplinary team conference; Patient preferences; Tumor board.

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Conflict of interest statement

Ethics approval and consent to participate

Ethics approval was obtained from the Regional Ethical Review Board in Lund (reference number: 2016/195). All respondents were informed about the study purposes and gave consent to participate.

Consent for publication

Not applicable.

Competing interests

The authors declare that they have no competing interests.

Publisher’s Note

Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1
Respondents’ views on MDTMs. Diverging stacked bar chart demonstrating the frequency of different levels of agreement on 20 statements. Scores from 1 (strongly disagree) to 7 (strongly agree)
Fig. 2
Fig. 2
Benefits of MDTMs. Respondents were asked to choose the reasons they considered most important, maximally three. Percentages refer to the total number of respondents (n = 203)
Fig. 3
Fig. 3
Barriers to joint recommendations in MDTMs. Respondents were asked to choose the barriers they considered most common, maximally three. Percentages refer to the total number of respondents (n = 216)
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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