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Background: Doctors with a history of mental health or substance use challenges face barriers accessing treatment and are difficult to recruit for research. This makes understanding their experiences challenging, yet essential. Overcoming barriers to research participation among unwell doctors is critical to advancing their overall health and wellbeing. Methods: A qualitative interview study of 21 allegedly impaired doctors in Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand who were subject to regulatory processes relating to their health. Based in an interpretative phenomenological paradigm, this paper examines participants' motivations for participation in this study and their reactions to participating. It highlights wider implications for sensitive research involving doctors and marginalised groups. Results: Participants were strongly motivated to participate in our research for their own benefit (desire to be heard, catharsis, and empowerment) and to benefit others (to change the system, and to avoid other doctors experiencing what they experienced). Careful planning and communication of unique legal risks fostered a trusting researcher-participant relationship. To assist other researchers undertaking sensitive qualitative research with vulnerable participants, we describe our research protocol, challenges, and successes in detail. Conclusions: Despite ethical concerns about research risk, researchers can and should pursue qualitative research into the experiences of under-represented groups, including allegedly impaired doctors. Without involving them in research that examines issues directly impacting on them, we may be inadvertently perpetuating the barriers and stigma that also hinder them from accessing treatment and support. This also deprives us of knowledge that can be used to improve doctors' health. This paper has broader relevance for anyone doing research with doctors, people in vulnerable positions, people disempowered by institutional or social systems, people who are stigmatised or shamed, and people who have experienced trauma. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Doctors with a history of mental health or substance use challenges face barriers accessing treatment and are difficult to recruit for research. This makes understanding their experiences challenging, yet essential. Overcoming barriers to research participation among unwell doctors is critical to advancing their overall health and wellbeing. Methods: A qualitative interview study of 21 allegedly impaired doctors in Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand who were subject to regulatory processes relating to their health. Based in an interpretative phenomenological paradigm, this paper examines participants' motivations for participation in this study and their reactions to participating. It highlights wider implications for sensitive research involving doctors and marginalised groups. Results: Participants were strongly motivated to participate in our research for their own benefit (desire to be heard, catharsis, and empowerment) and to benefit others (to change the system, and to avoid other doctors experiencing what they experienced). Careful planning and communication of unique legal risks fostered a trusting researcher-participant relationship. To assist other researchers undertaking sensitive qualitative research with vulnerable participants, we describe our research protocol, challenges, and successes in detail. Conclusions: Despite ethical concerns about research risk, researchers can and should pursue qualitative research into the experiences of underrepresented groups, including allegedly impaired doctors. Without involving them in research that examines issues directly impacting on them, we may be inadvertently perpetuating the barriers and stigma that also hinder them from accessing treatment and support. This also deprives us of knowledge that can be used to improve doctors' health. This paper has broader relevance for anyone doing research with doctors, people in vulnerable positions, people disempowered by institutional or social systems, people who are stigmatised or shamed, and people who have experienced trauma. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Australia responded to the emergence of the COVID-19 global pandemic in 2020 by initiating a border and bio-security zone lockdown and policies emphasising social distancing and hand hygiene. To understand the public response to this, Southern Queensland Rural Health commenced a two-phase research project exploring attitudes and practices towards the COVID-19 pandemic in Australia. An initial online survey foreshadowed 90 qualitative interviews with respondents to explore what the pandemic meant for everyday life. This paper details use of a qualitative approach by a national collaborative of investigators from 9 rural university departments in Australia who came together to research the qualitative phase of the project. Our methodological approach aligned with extant literature describing the management of large-scale interviewing and coding in the context of unfolding and dynamic contexts. The 'RITA' model (Rapid Identification of Themes from Audio recordings) entails a five-step process designed to progress from identifying research foci, through deductive and iterative coding to identify key concepts. We used a combination of coding templates, organisation and tagging of field notes and real-time sharing through a secure cloud drive to create a data set for immersive analysis and generation of ideas. Use of this method has added to the collective knowledge about successful rapid research investigations, recognising the inherent tension between speed and rigour. This is not a binary but a dialectic; trustworthiness is integral to qualitative research. However, use of fresh approaches is accommodated by new technologies and can preserve adequate rigour while enabling collaboration, research capacity building and increasing the pace of data collection and analysis. This project has presented methodological challenges and highlights some strengths of such an approach. It is hoped that reporting our approach and experiences is useful for the broader health and research community considering large-scale qualitative research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]