Communication is an integral component of good clinical practice and delivery of excellent and safe patient care. Multi-disciplinary team (MDT) meetings ensure higher quality decision-making and improved outcomes by facilitating collaboration between professionals. However, the communication from the MDT meetings to ward staff are often lacking, resulting in key tasks being omitted and/or delayed. Inevitably, this affects patient care and can lead to detrimental effects such as delayed surgery, treatment or discharge. The aim of this study was: 1) to identify whether the current methods of communication used by the Vascular MDT members are a safe and effective method of sharing updates with the ward staff, and 2) to reduce the possibility that new jobs for patients may be significantly delayed/missed by ward staff following MDT meeting.

We conducted a Quality Improvement Project where we collected qualitative data using surveys designed on Google Forms. These were completed by staff who attend the meeting, staff who work on the ward, or both. The first PDSA cycle was to investigate communication amongst MDT and ward staff prior to any changes being implemented. Given these results, we conducted a second PDSA cycle where one junior doctor attending the meeting would use MDT-specific template stickers to document the discussion for each patient, and insert these into the medical notes. Following the results of the second cycle surveys, it was determined that a third PDSA cycle would be required to achieve our aims. The junior doctor attending the meeting would now document individual patient plans on the hospital's electronic system (NerveCentre) that is accessible to all staff across all three hospital sites.

In the first cycle questionnaire, 93% of respondents rated the current methods of communication between MDT and ward staff as "not so effective" or "not at all effective". Only 7% believed new jobs following the MDT handover were not missed, and 64% felt a lack of communication significantly affected surgical management/discharge planning. Following the implementation of the MDT-specific template stickers, the general responses were an overall improvement; however, all respondents unanimously agreed that this method of communication could be improved further. Given the open response questions at the end of the survey, we noted that the team identified multiple drawbacks with the sticker system; 69% of respondents suggested using the hospital electronic system instead. The third and final cycle determined that using the hospital's electronic system was an appropriate method of improving communication between the MDT and ward staff following the lunchtime meeting, as agreed unanimously by participants. 75% of respondents now rated the effectiveness of communication between the MDT and ward staff as either "extremely effective" or "very effective" and 81% of respondents felt that jobs were now either rarely or never missed.

Good communication is critical for the effective interdisciplinary care of patients. Our study highlighted that current methods of communication between MDT and ward staff were ineffective and resulted in key tasks being omitted and/or delayed. However, following the implementation of different communication methods this has significantly improved jobs not being missed. It is therefore important to continue to explore different modes of communication to identify any further areas that could be improved to facilitate interdisciplinary communication and ultimately ensuring excellent patient care and safety.