Abstract
The growing complexity of cancer care necessitates collaboration among different professionals. This interprofessional collaboration improves cancer care delivery and outcomes. Treatment decision-making within the context of a multidisciplinaire team meeting (MDTMs) may be seen as a particular form of interprofessional collaboration. Various studies on cancer MDTMs highlight a pattern of suboptimal information sharing between attendants. To overcome the lack of non-medical, patient-based information, it might be recommended that non-physician care professionals play a key patient advocacy role within cancer MDTMs. This study aims to explore non-physician care professionals’ current and aspired role within cancer MDTMs. Additionally, the perceived hindering factors for these non-physician care professionals to fulfil their specific role are identified. The analysis focuses on nurses, specialist nurses, head nurses, psychologists, social workers, a head of social workers and data managers. The results show that non-physician care professionals play a limited role during case discussions in MDTMs. Neither do they actively participate in the decision-making process. Barriers perceived by non-physician care professionals are classified on two main levels: 1) team-related barriers (factors internally related to the team) and 2) external barriers (factors related to healthcare management and policy). A group of non-physician care professionals also belief that their information does not add value in the decision-making proces and as such, they underestimate their own role in MDTMs. To conclude, a change of culture is needed towards an interdisciplinary collaboration in which knowledge and expertise of different professions are equally assimilated into an integrated perspective to guarantee a true patient-centred approach for cancer MDTMs.
Highlights
The growing complexity of cancer care necessitates collaboration among different professionals as evidence suggests that the collaboration between professionals improves cancer care delivery and outcomes [1]
This study explored non-physician cancer care professionals’ current and aspired role in multidisciplinary team meetings (MDTMs)
Some of the legal criteria surrounding the Multidisciplinary Oncology Consult (MOC) address details about the attendance of medical professionals; for example, the MOC is reimbursed when at least four medical disciplines are represented [3]. This benefits patients’ quality of care, attendance of oncological nurses and other non-physician care professionals during the MOC is not regulated by law, making their role in MDTMs rather ambiguous
Summary
The growing complexity of cancer care necessitates collaboration among different professionals as evidence suggests that the collaboration between professionals improves cancer care delivery and outcomes [1]. Interprofessional collaboration in cancer care is typically carried out by means of multidisciplinary team meetings (MDTMs). These meetings consist of multiple professionals involved in the delivery of care for cancer patients uniting weekly or fortnightly to review patient cases and discuss treatment options with the aim of agreeing upon an individual treatment recommendation for each cancer patient [3]. MDTMs are proven to be essential to cancer care as they improve decision-making, coordination and communication [4]. Health professionals report strong benefits from MDTM related to support for further patient management and professional competence development [5]
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