Conducting Qualitative Research Under Pandemic Restrictions – Considerations, Challenges, and Benefits

Abstract

Background: The Covid-19 pandemic had a significant impact on professionals working in the medical area, resulting in a very high workload and tightened safety restrictions for physicians, nurses, caregivers, and patients. Medical professionals pose one of the main target groups in health services research. Their experiences contribute immensely to any research project aiming to improve delivery and quality of care. Furthermore, their input contributes significantly to gaining greater insight into the current handling of the pandemic and into what future improvements should be considered. In this paper, we discuss the challenges and benefits of conducting a qualitative research project under pandemic conditions by illustrating the progress of our research project ADAPTIVE. Methods: ADAPTIVE started in March 2020 and ended in August 2021. For data collection, we asked 26 participants to take part in an interview about using a web-based program to facilitate the exchange of patient information in multidisciplinary teams. Unfortunately, due to emerging hygiene regulations, corona-related restrictions, and the ongoing workload of medical professionals, the recruiting and interviewing process was challenging. Because of that we had to modify the original study design.Results: We discussed several adjustments for the data collection. However, the privacy policies of different clinics, professionals’ lack of experience with video calls, and participants’ poor internet connectivity eliminated the option of digital video interviewing. Alternatively, we interviewed participants by telephone. Nevertheless, telephone interviews come with limitations. Firstly, it may be difficult for participants to establish a trusting relationship with the interviewer. Secondly, non-verbal communication is lost during a telephone interview. Further, the focus group discussions initially planned had to be dismissed since a simultaneous gathering of the participants was not possible due several reasons. Conclusions: Qualitative research offers greater flexibility when adapting study designs and can, therefore, be successful, even under pandemic conditions. However, recruitment and data collection showed to be more time-consuming than under non-pandemic circumstances, and some methodological instruments such as focus groups were not possible. Trial registration: https://www.drks.de/drks_web/navigate.do?navigationId=trial.HTML&TRIAL_ID=DRKS00021603 (Registration: 02. July 2020)

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