What is a Multidisciplinary Team or MDT?
An MDT is a group of healthcare professionals from one or more clinical disciplines who meet on a regular basis, usually once per week, who together make decisions regarding the treatment of individual patients. Urgent decisions can be made outside of the weekly meeting between the healthcare professionals providing that all required information is available. MDTs often specialise in certain conditions, such as cancer. Clinical decisions are made based on reviews of clinical records such as case notes, test results, diagnostic imaging etc and of course following patient consultations.
Frimley Park Hospital Breast MDT
The Frimley Park Hospital Breast MDT meets every Friday morning, where all new referrals and existing patients are discussed. Decisions about individual patients are fed back to GPs and are discussed with the patients. Individual patients are discussed at the MDT right up until they are discharged, but even then, they are brought back for discussion after their follow up tests and appointments. It is common for patients to be referred to other specialty MDTs depending on other known or newly diagnosed conditions.
In addition to the MDT above, other members of my team will include, secretarial, clinical fellows and junior doctors to name a few.