Creative Education, 2018, 9, 1252-1257

[Link]
ISSN Online: 2151-4771
ISSN Print: 2151-4755

Short Report—The MDT Speed Date

Jenny Blythe

Clinical Teaching Fellow, Barts and the London School of Medicine and Dentistry, Queen Mary University of London, Garrod
Building, Turner Street, London, UK

How to cite this paper: Blythe, J. (2018). Abstract

Short Report—The MDT Speed Date. Cre-
ative Education, 9, 1252-1257. The importance of introducing both interprofessional education (IPE) and
[Link] familiarity with the wider multidisciplinary team (MDT) roles cannot be un-
derestimated in the undergraduate medical curriculum. This short report out-
Received: May 29, 2018
Accepted: June 26, 2018
lines an innovative method of teaching medical students about the role of the
Published: June 29, 2018 MDT in holistic patient management by way of a simulation “speed-date” and
MDT meeting.
Copyright © 2018 by author and
Scientific Research Publishing Inc.
This work is licensed under the Creative
Keywords
Commons Attribution International Interprofessional Education, Multidisciplinary Team, Simulation
License (CC BY 4.0).
[Link]
Open Access
1. Introduction
Interprofessional Education (IPE) has been defined by the Centre for Advance-
ment of Interprofessional Education (CAIPE) as occurring when “two or more
professions learn with, from and about each other to improve collaboration and
quality of care” (CAIPE, 2006). CAIPE’s vision of effective IPE is summarised in
seven principles including focusing upon the needs of the service users and res-
pecting the integrity and contribution of each profession.
According to Freeth (2011), suggested models of formal IPE (as opposed to
informal IPE where members from different disciplines are learning alongside
each other in the clinical environment) include simulation. Simulation has been
proposed as a technique to bridge the educational gap between the classroom
and the clinical environment (Okuda et al., 2009). It provides a safe learning en-
vironment that protects patients and learners, and has also been shown to be a
reliable tool for teaching topics such as teamwork and communication (Freeth,
2011, Okuda et al., 2009).
Medical students experiencing Primary Care in the broader sense, with more
multidisciplinary team (MDT) working, keeps in step with newer models of de-

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 J. Blythe

livery of care and is direction of development in UK Primary Healthcare. Freeth

(2011) states that “healthcare is delivered by multidisciplinary teams so inter-
professional practice is inevitable”. By introducing IPE in their “middle years”,
students have begun to build a relatively secure technical knowledge base relat-
ing to their own profession, but also have begun to appreciate the complexities
of communication skills, teamwork, decision making and working in partner-
ship with patients and carers (Freeth, 2011). Furthermore, studies of IPE at a
pre-registration level have demonstrated a development of positive perceptions
of members of other professions, and that rehearsing interprofessional team-
work is valued (Dienst & Byl, 1981; Cooke et al., 2003; Carpenter, 1995; Mires et
al., 2001).
A reorganisation of the undergraduate primary care curriculum at our medi-
cal school raised the opportunity to develop central medical school teaching
around MDT working, and our aim was to give students an increased awareness
of the different roles that individual MDT members lead on in regards to patient
care, and for students to have an immersive simulated experience in regards to
an MDT meeting.
There was also the unique opportunity to work with a local specialist GP prac-
tice that only registered patients from the local area with five or more chronic
conditions. This specialist practice had been developed as part of a Prime Minis-
ter’s Challenge Fund to improve access to General Practice and stimulate inno-
vative ways of providing primary care services (NHSE, 2015), and as such, the
practice directly employed a full MDT solely for its approximately 500 patients.

2. Methods
Third year medical students, all in their first year of full clinical study, took part
in the activity as part of a half day pilot of teaching activities about MDT work-
ing. For this particular activity, a total of 16 participants were involved and di-
vided into four equal sized groups. The pilot session began with MDT members
from the practice, a community pharmacist, a social worker, an occupational
therapist and a nurse-giving student a brief summary about their principal role
in patient care. Following this, each student group were given a different printed
patient summary that included information about a patient’s long-term condi-
tions, their current medications and information about their three most recent
contacts with the practice. Each group of students was also given the outline of
the acute problem that their patient had presented to their GP with at that time.
Students were then advised that they would be given five minutes in turn with
the four different members of the MDT, and at the end of the “speed date”, they
would be asked to prepare and feed back to the MDT members a holistic care
plan at an MDT “meeting” with the medical students in the role of the GP.
The patients used in the pilot were based upon four patients at the special-
ist practice described above, although all identifiable features of the patients
had been either removed or anonymised, and patients clinical details had been

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J. Blythe

adapted. Permission to use anonymised patient information had been gained

from the original patients prior to the pilot activity.
The MDT members who attended the pilot were all staff at the specialist prac-
tice described above and familiar with the original patients that were the basis
for the patients used in the scenarios. Prior to the activity, MDT members had
been advised not to discuss any identifiable features of the original patients in
the discussions with the students.
Unbeknown to the students, two of the patients in the summaries were hus-
band and wife, whose individual clinical problems were having a negative impact
upon each other’s health. Prior to the pilot activity, the MDT members were also
advised not to divulge the information that two of the patients in the scenarios
were connected in this way.
After the speed date, students were then given thirty minutes to write up a ho-
listic action plan for their patient to present back to fellow students and the
MDT members in a simulated meeting. It was only during the presentation of
the second spouse member of the “patient couple” did the students realise that
their patients were living in the same household, and there was then a further
spontaneous discussion between the students about how each individual patient
plan would require adaptation to reflect this. The whole session, including a
short break and end of session questionnaire evaluation, lasted just under two
hours.
The anonymised questionnaire was administered in paper format at the end of
the session. The first question gave the students ten different describing words
(including “practical”, “tedious”, “relevant”, “enjoyable”, “boring”) and they
were invited to circle as many words as they felt related to the session. There
were then two free text questions-the first asked to list three things that they had
learnt in the session, and the second question asked students to list up to three
suggestions for improvements to the session.

3. Results
All students described the activity as one or more of practical, relevant or useful.
Free text feedback included positive comments about learning about the role of
different members of the MDT and gaining an understanding of different team
members “focus” in patient care. One student commented upon the value of
having the “real voice” of MDT members present for the activity. Informal dis-
cussion with MDT members after the session elicited a high rate of satisfaction
with the session and commented upon both the student engagement and how
the actions plans produced were comparable to those in practice in terms of
their holistic and pragmatic nature.

4. Discussion
The MDT speed date was well received by both students and MDT members,
and feedback reflected successful achievement of the aims of the activity. Since

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 J. Blythe

professional practice is interprofessional, Freeth (2011) argues that it “makes

sense” for some simulation-based education to be interprofessional. A key aspect
of effective IPE design is perceived relevance of the activity, appealing to the
shared interest in delivering good care to patients as the object of that shared in-
terest (Freeth, 2011; Engestrom, 1999). Using patient cases in the pilot aligns to
this strategy. Specifically to Primary Care, IPE has been shown to help practi-
tioners resolve complex issues with clients and their ability to utilise other re-
sources (Larivaara & Taanila, 2018), so for medical students to have an IPE ac-
tivity during a Primary Care attachment that simulates a skill that would be re-
quired of them in the workplace further justifies its place in the undergraduate
curriculum. In their meta analysis of the effectiveness of IPE in healthcare edu-
cation, Gurya and Barr summarise that “the real essence of IPE at the undergra-
duate level springs from the fact that students are trained to learn with, from,
and about several professions from the start of their studies ∙∙∙ this will foster
their understanding about the value and significance of other professions and ∙∙∙
empowers students in establishing effective working relationships” (Guraya &
Barr, 2018).
This innovative format could potentially be used with different groups of un-
dergraduate students (eg student nurses, pharmacists etc) with the same aim of
participants gaining an understanding of effective MDT working. However, by
definition, any IPE initiative requires involvement and participation of multiple
disciplines, so faculty members from these programs must be “on board” (Lash
et al., 2014).
However, the pilot in this specific format proves logistically problematic to
scale up to the larger student cohort (now a minimum 270 medical students in a
one academic year group). There would need to be in multiple repeats of small
group sessions that would require availability of suitably trained MDT members.
Taking actively working MDT members out of their clinical time for education
may also have a negative impact on patient care. The literature supports the ar-
gument that challenges experienced in implementing IPE activities include
scheduling, logistics, and financial support (West et al., 2016).
Alternative strategies to the pilot to address the same aims include students
playing the roles of the MDT member with a script, or students being supplied
with either video or written scripts from other MDT members; both of this me-
thods compromise the immersive nature and fidelity of the activity. However, it
has been suggested that fidelity is less important than suspension of disbelief in
terms of learning outcome (Hamstra et al., 2014). As undergraduate IPE is
clearly acknowledged as “an investment in the future” (Freeth, 2011), the alter-
native methods outlined above are both worth considering going forward if they
are well received by students and so move towards the CAIPE vision of effective
IPE.
Future research in this area includes rolling out the programme to other pro-
fessional undergraduate groups and running the “speed dates” and MDT meet-
ing simulations using the alternative strategies outlined above, and seeing if sim-

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J. Blythe

ilar high levels of student satisfaction and perceived relevance are maintained.
Other aligned research topics include gaining a deeper understanding of local
faculty drivers and barriers to effective implementation of IPE at undergraduate
level, and formal qualitative analysis of MDT members analysis of the pilot for-
mat.

5. Conclusion
This innovative and creative simulation pilot gave medical students the oppor-
tunity to learn about the role of different MDT members first-hand and how
these different professions come together as a team to provide best care for the
patient. Going forward, this pilot will form the basis of other small group work
with similar educational aims, although for practical reasons, the format will
most likely be adapted to a less high fidelity format. Whatever format that
teaching takes, the focus will remain the care of the patient, with the ongoing
aim of effective IPE delivery to undergraduates as an investment in the future
workforce.

Acknowledgements
With also many thanks and gratitude to the MDT Staff of Health 1000 Wellness
Practice.

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