Initiating Prognostic Talk During Hospice Multidisciplinary Team Meetings: A Conversation Analytic Study

Objective: Guidelines recommend that patients' prognoses should be discussed by the palliative care multidisciplinary team. However, there is a lack of evidence on how multidisciplinary teams carry out prognostic discussions, and especially how prognostic talk is initiated during team meetings. This study explored how prognostic talk is initiated and responded to during meetings of a hospice multidisciplinary team. Methods: Video-recordings of 24 inpatient multidisciplinary team meetings in a UK hospice were collected from May to December 2021. A total of 65 multidisciplinary team members participated in the meetings. Recordings were transcribed and analysed using Conversation Analysis. Results: Prognostic talk was initiated during multidisciplinary team members' patient case presentations. Case presentations followed a certain template, and prognoses could be initiated as responses to template items such as the patient's Phase of Illness and Karnofsky's Performance Status score and the patient's main diagnosis and issues. Prognoses also occurred as accounts for a lack of template item responses. Beyond the patient case presentation, prognostic talk was initiated in relation to discharge planning. Prognoses appeared with sequences of assessments that accounted for them. When a prognosis was provided, it received confirming minimal responses from other team members. Conclusions: Patients' prognoses were embedded into other care discussions during meetings of a hospice multidisciplinary team. These findings can be used to inform the development of clinical guidelines and interventions aiming at improving multidisciplinary team discussions around prognosis in the future.