Multidisciplinary team meetings in community mental health: a systematic review of their functions

Mental Health Review Journal, < a href="http://www.emeraldinsight.com/toc/mhrj/21/2" > Volume 21, Issue 2 < /a > , Page 119-140, June 2016. < br/ > Purpose – Previous research has identified a need for greater clarity regarding the functions of multidisciplinary team (MDT) meetings in UK community mental health services. The purpose of this paper is to identify the functions of these meetings by systematically reviewing both primary research and acad emic discussion papers. Design/methodology/approach – Papers relating to adult community mental health teams (CMHTs) in the UK and published between September 1999 and February 2014 were reviewed and appraised using NICE quality checklists. The search was broad in scope to include both general CMHTs and specialist CMHTs such as early intervention psychosis services and forensic mental health teams. A thematic synthesis of the findings was performed to develop an overarching thematic framework of the reported functions of MDT meetings. Findings – None of the 4,046 studies identified directly investigated the functions of MDT meetings. However, 49 mentioned functions in passing. These functions were categorised into four thematic domains: discussing the care of individual patients, teamwork, team management and learning and development. Several papers reported a lack of clarity about the purpose of MDT meetings and the roles of different team members which hindered effective collaboration. Practical implicatio...

Source: Mental Health Review Journal - May 25, 2016 Category: Psychiatry Source Type: research