Multi-disciplinary Team Meetings for Cancer Care: Results of an Australian Survey

Christopher Bain¹, Gitesh K. Raikundalia^2, , Tamara Shulman³ and Rajesh Sharma³

¹Health Informatics, Alfred Health, Prahran, Melbourne, Australia

²College of Engineering and Science, Victoria University, Melbourne, Australia

³Western & Central Melbourne Integrated Cancer, Melbourne, Australia

Cite this paper:
Christopher Bain, Gitesh K. Raikundalia, Tamara Shulman and Rajesh Sharma. Multi-disciplinary Team Meetings for Cancer Care: Results of an Australian Survey. Journal of Cancer Research and Treatment. 2013; 1(1):12-23. doi: 10.12691/jcrt-1-1-3

Abstract

Multi-disciplinary team meetings (MDMs) are a model employed in the health area, particularly in cancer care. Teams consist of a variety of health care professionals, such as medical oncologists, radiologists, pathologists and nurses as well as allied health professionals including occupational therapists, physiotherapists, dieticians, etc. A diversity of pertinent professionals aims to provide far better care and support to a cancer patient than possible by a handful of such professionals. Meetings are carried out with the above professionals as participants to discuss the care of a given patient. The work reported in this paper involved the authoring of an online survey to determine views of MDM participants in Australia with regard to issues of workforce and workflow. This is the first ever Australia-wide survey of these issues. The authors are interested in understanding these issues in the Australian context in which they work. The survey, consisting mainly of closed-ended questions, applied a convenience sampling method and was completed by 339 respondents around the nation. The authors report the findings from analysis of the responses of this large number of respondents. Findings include those such as: MDMs being overwhelmingly useful in Australia and that their uptake should be promulgated to settings where they are not used; excessive number of patients being discussed or insufficient time allocated to patients, in some cases; the dire need for consistency in aspects such as documentation and commitment from participants.

Keywords:
Australia multi-disciplinary teams multi-disciplinary team meetings MDM MDTM online survey

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

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