Exploring non-physician care professionals' roles in cancer multidisciplinary team meetings: A qualitative study

• Published in: PloS one 2022-02, Vol.17 (2), p.e0263611-e0263611
• Main Authors: Horlait, Melissa, De Regge, Melissa, Baes, Saskia, Eeckloo, Kristof, Leys, Mark
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Belgium; Biology and Life Sciences; Cancer; Cancer therapies; Care and treatment; Clinical competence; Collaboration; Data collection; Decision Making; Family physicians; Female; Focus Groups; Forecasts and trends; Health Personnel; Hospitals; Humans; Identification and classification; Interdisciplinary Communication; Male; Medical Oncology - organization & administration; Medical personnel; Medicine; Medicine and Health Sciences; Meetings; Multidisciplinary teams; Neoplasms - therapy; Nurses; Oncology; Patient Care Team - organization & administration; Patients; People and Places; Pharmacy; Practice; Professionals; Psychologists; Psychology; Public health; Qualitative Research; Radiation therapy; Services; Social Sciences; Social Workers; Treatment Outcome
• ISSN: 1932-6203; 1932-6203
• DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0263611

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.