Table 1.

Quotations About the Theme: The Efficiency and Traits of an Ideal Multidisciplinary Team (MDT) Chairperson

Participant Number	Indicative Quotation
10	“You have to be diplomatic; you have to be able to quell a noisy crowd. You have to be across the cases, you have to really construe the narrative because it can go off on a tangent …. You have to get on with everybody; you have to subtly discipline a meeting. You have to know as much as everybody in the room about the case. You have to listen and … delegate effectively. So, you cannot scribe, you cannot take the minutes, you cannot interpret results. … You have to be the orchestra conductor.”
6	“Well, knowledgeable, some humility and a good listener … A good Chair is someone who doesn’t talk too much, and who lets others talk. Who invites opinions from those who don’t speak up.”
2	“So, going around and asking the key people their opinions to make sure those that may be a bit afraid to speak up feel that their opinion is valued. And giving them the chance and making sure everybody else is quiet so they can be heard.”
7	“Ideally, it would be someone who the whole group certainly respects and who is also able to elate [sic] some discussion sometimes, because on paper it seems like everyone can follow the step-by-step rules of what the recommendations are, each group gives their opinion on what the management should be for their patient.”
8	“I think someone who has good, level communication skills, … who has good relationships with all the different specialties, and somebody who is organised and has a broad knowledge of management of the conditions which they are discussing, not just in their own speciality.”
2	“The problems I’ve seen have been about time. So, often you’ve got an hour, there’s a lot of patients. And it’s very easy for discussion to go off track. And so I think trying to rein that back in and cut people off and bring them back to the point.”
10	“You’ve got to be conscious of time and you have to finish on time. That’s so important because meetings that run over just drive everybody crazy.”