Abstract Background Multidisciplinary team (MDT) medicine is the national gold standard for cancer care. Medical students are often encouraged to observe MDTs, however such meetings discuss a high volume of complex cases at rapid pace. This presents limited opportunities for learning or engagement for a student observer. We describe a novel teaching exercise which assigns students to roles on a simulated MDT, with the aim of improving understanding of collaborative MDT working. Method A simulation exercise was devised which assigned individual students to one of ten roles on a gastrointestinal cancer MDT. Each student was given information about a fictional patient which pertained to their role and encouraged to discuss management options as a group. Student feedback was sought to assess understanding of MDTs and teaching quality of both the simulation exercise and observation of a formal MDT meeting. Results Sixty-five students provided feedback on both the simulation exercise and the facilitated MDT observation session. Most students (78%) rated the simulation exercise as either “good” (40%) or “excellent” (38%), with a statistically significant improvement in mean score for the role-play compared to formal MDT observation (mean difference 0.46, p<0.001, 95% CI 0.23-0.69). Fifty-three students (82%) reported that participation in the simulation exercise improved their understanding of MDTs. Conclusions Multidisciplinary care teaching can be delivered to medical students in an acceptable form using principles of simulation-based training. Potential further developments for simulated MDTs include use of anonymised patient data to create more authentic vignettes and use of parallel pre- and post-test questions to assess learning.