MDT Leads chair meetings that make case decisions determining patient care and outcomes.  These meetings see diverse clinical specialisms make decisions for 40-60 cases in meetings lasting 1-4 hours.  Alongside fatigue, thirst and hunger compromising focus and quality attention, decisions can be unhelpfully influenced by a speciality mindset, a disease rather than patient focus and dominant voices.  As well as leading these meetings, MDT leads also have responsibility for audit and continuous quality improvement, involving reviewing outcomes and performance, implementing streamlining and standards of care while working with network partners to maintain SOPs.

Recognising that the effectiveness of these meetings and the decisions made within them influences the delivery of care, health outcomes, the attainment of cancer targets, the welfare of health professionals delivering care and the effective use of NHS resources and healthcare professionals’ time, Living Potential have now successfully piloted and are able to offer a MDT lead development programme of 4 x 0.5 day modules over 12 weeks, enabling leads to 

• manage these critical meetings and decisions with confidence and insight, focusing on development and improvement

• embed processes to monitor quality and implement improvements, notably in MDT streamlining

• ensure that the meetings become more patient-centred

Participants say:

‘‘Great course, very helpful’’

‘‘Extremely useful programme, very interactive and I’ve gained lots of ideas that I want to put into practice’’