Evaluation of changes to work patterns in multidisciplinary cancer team meetings due to the COVID‐19 pandemic: A national mixed‐method survey study

Abstract

Background: It is not well understood the overall changes that multidisciplinary teams (MDTs) have had to make in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, nor the impact that such changes, in addition to the other challenges faced by MDTs, have had on decision-making, communication, or participation in the context of MDT meetings specifically. Methods: This was a mixed method, prospective cross-sectional survey study taking place in the United Kingdom between September 2020 and August 2021. Results: The participants were 423 MDT members. Qualitative findings revealed hybrid working and possibility of virtual attendance as the change introduced because of COVID-19 that MDTs would like to maintain. However, IT-related issues, slower meetings, longer lists and delays were identified as common with improving of the IT infrastructure necessary going forward. In contrast, virtual meetings and increased attendance/availability of clinicians were highlighted as the positive outcomes resulting from the change. Quantitative findings showed significant improvement from before COVID-19 for MDT meeting organisation and logistics (M = 45, SD = 20) compared to the access (M = 50, SD = 12, t(390) = 5.028, p = 0.001), case discussions (M = 50, SD = 14, t(373) = −5.104, p = 0.001), and patient representation (M = 50, SD = 12, t(382) = −4.537, p = 0.001) at MDT meetings. Discussion: Our study explored the perception of change since COVID-19 among cancer MDTs using mixed methods. While hybrid working was preferred, challenges exist.

How well does the virtual format of oncology multidisciplinary team meetings work? An assessment of participants’ perspectives and limitations: A scoping review

“…The number of studies at each stage of the screening process is shown in Fig 1 . Study designs of included studies were mostly observational cross-sectional studies (n = 15) [7,[17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30]. Other study designs were retrospective review of records with a cross-sectional survey (n = 12) [5,[31][32][33][34][35][36][37][38][39][40][41], meeting observations with cross-sectional survey (n = 1) [42], mixedmethod design (n = 3) [43][44][45], embedded study design (n = 1) [46], randomized controlled trials (n = 2) [47,48], descriptive qualitative synthesis using free-text cross-sectional surveys (n = 1) [49], and an anthropological analysis (n = 1) [50]. A detailed summary of study characteristics is shown in Table 1.…”

“…One study was published in 1999 [5]. Most studies had populations from VMDTMs based in the United States of America (n = 10) [5,18,21,25,26,33,35,37,38,46], followed by the United Kingdom (n = 8) [7,17,22,23,43,44,47,48]. The distribution of these studies is described in the S5 File.…”

“…The foremost benefit of the virtual nature of VMDTMs has been the removed need to schedule rooms for the meeting, thereby facilitating convenient remote access for participants [19,43]. This benefits the meeting itself by impacting clinician attendance as, since the advent of the virtual format, participant attendance in board meetings has reportedly increased [19,43,44]. However, one study, that assessed responses from a national VMDTM, reported sub-optimal attendance in the national VMDTM owing to irregular meeting times and a lack of resources [49].…”

“…Around 77-88% of respondents in three studies said that technological problems barely affected VMDTMs [23,36,46]. Despite high overall satisfaction with technology in VMDTMs, technological issues exist and can be a significant hurdle for VMDTMs [28,43,44]. Furthermore, the switch to a virtual format can cause participants short-term difficulties, which subside once participants become familiar with the format [22].…”

“…Technological barriers. Improving technological structure is one of the most important changes to improve VMDTMs [43,44], as shortcomings in this domain may hinder participation [7]. The major technological challenge was connectivity across most studies [17,19,21,30,43,46,49].…”