Participation of (in)patients during Multidisciplinary Team Meetings in Mental Healthcare

Background: Patients are increasingly being invited to participate during multidisciplinary team meetings in mental healthcare. There is quiet some evidence about this research topic in elderly and palliative care but little is known about the research topic in mental healthcare. This study aims to develop a questionnaire that measures the overall perception of (future) caregivers and patients about this research topic. Methods: A Delphi-study was used. In total 29 experts panellists (21 health workers in mental healthcare and 8 patients) completed a two round Delphi process. Data was collected and analysed by a main researcher and independently reviewed by 3 other researchers. Results: In our final PaPaT-Questionnaire, we identified 49 items that may be associated with the overall perception of caregivers about patient participation during multidisciplinary team meetings in mental healthcare. The experts agreed on 93,8% of all items that were presented to them in the final Delphi round, and the mean expert consensus of all items in the final questionnaire was 78,5%. We are therefore confident that our findings adequately represent a robust consensus of the expert opinions about the statements in the PaPaT-Questionnaire. Discussion and conclusion: The provisional questionnaire created via this Delphi study has achieved considerable content validity, yet requires further face, criterion-, and construct validity as well as test-retest and reliability testing before it may be clinically used. We are therefore currently conducting such study for the Dutch language version of the questionnaire. After this process, the questionnaire will be used for a cross-sectional research in Flanders (Belgium). These insights can encourage other organizations to translate the PaPaT-Questionnaire and to repeat a cross-sectional research in their own system of mental healthcare.