Do Multidisciplinary Cancer Care Teams Suffer Decision-making Fatigue: an Observational, Longitudinal Team Improvement Study

Overview

Journal BMJ Open

Specialty General Medicine

Date 2019 May 30

PMID 31138582

Citations 22

Authors

Tayana Soukup

Tasha A K Gandamihardja

Sue McInerney

James S A Green

Nick Sevdalis

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

Objective: The objective of this study was to examine effectiveness of codesigned quality-improving interventions with a multidisciplinary team (MDT) with high workload and prolonged meetings to ascertain: (1) presence and impact of decision-making (DM) fatigue on team performance in the weekly MDT meeting and (2) impact of a short meeting break as a countermeasure of DM fatigue.

Design And Interventions: This is a longitudinal multiphase study with a codesigned intervention bundle assessed within team audit and feedback cycles. The interventions comprised short meeting breaks, as well as change of room layout and appointing a meeting chair.

Setting And Participants: A breast cancer MDT with 15 members was recruited between 2013 and 2015 from a teaching hospital of the London (UK) metropolitan area.

Measures: A validated observational tool (Metric for the Observation of Decision-making) was used by trained raters to assess quality of DM during 1335 patient reviews. The tool scores quality of information and team contributions to reviews by individual disciplines (Likert-based scores), which represent our two primary outcome measures.

Results: Data were analysed using multivariate analysis of variance. DM fatigue was present in the MDT meetings: quality of information (M=16.36 to M=15.10) and contribution scores (M=27.67 to M=21.52) declined from first to second half of meetings at baseline. Of the improvement bundle, we found breaks reduced the effect of fatigue: following introduction of breaks (but not other interventions) information quality remained stable between first and second half of meetings (M=16.00 to M=15.94), and contributions to team DM improved overall (M=17.66 to M=19.85).

Conclusion: Quality of cancer team DM is affected by fatigue due to sequential case review over often prolonged periods of time. This detrimental effect can be reversed by introducing a break in the middle of the meeting. The study offers a methodology based on 'team audit and feedback' principle for codesigning interventions to improve teamwork in cancer care.

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