Abstract
PurposeMultidisciplinary team meetings (MDTMs) are an integral component of cancer care. Increasingly, virtual MDTMs are used to grant high-quality treatment recommendations across health-care regions, which expands and develops the local MDTM team to a regional or national expert network. We investigated health professionals’ experiences from national, virtual MDTMs for rare cancer with a focus on key enabling factors and barriers.MethodsHealth professionals who participate in seven national, virtual MDTMs in Swedish health-care responded to a questionnaire exploring key enabling factors, barriers and opportunities for MDTM development. Conventional content analysis was used to identify thematic categories based on free-text responses.ResultsParticipants´ perspectives could be assigned into three categories ie, a national arena with potential for comprehensive knowledge and collaboration, prerequisites for decision-making and organization and responsibilities. These categories consisted of nine sub-categories that referred to, eg, collective competence, resources, clinical research, case discussion, meeting climate, patient-related information, MDTMs potential, referral and technical insufficiencies.ConclusionNational, virtual MDTMs represent a new multidisciplinary collaborative arena that introduces benefits as well as challenges. Consideration of key enabling factors and barriers may ease implementation and further optimize MDTMs in cancer care.
Highlights
In cancer care, multidisciplinary team meetings (MDTMs) constitute a recurrent, weekly task for many health professionals and are recognized as a focal point of treatment recommendations
Management of rare cancers is challenged by limited evidence for best practice, expert skills are typically confined to a few key health professionals and clinical research programs are hampered by the low incidence.[6,7]
Virtual MDTMs aim to grant treatment recommendation based on evidence or best possible expert opinion and to ensure equity of care across geographical regions, develop national expert networks and stimulate clinical research
Summary
Multidisciplinary team meetings (MDTMs) constitute a recurrent, weekly task for many health professionals and are recognized as a focal point of treatment recommendations. To provide best possible services, grant sufficient expert knowledge and stimulate clinical development and research, treatment of certain rare cancers has been centralized to two-four national expert centers. These centers have established a national, virtual MDTM where newly diagnosed cases as well as all recurrences should be discussed. Virtual MDTMs aim to grant treatment recommendation based on evidence or best possible expert opinion and to ensure equity of care across geographical regions, develop national expert networks and stimulate clinical research
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