Table 2.

Examples of the coding trees

Participant group	Units of analysis	Open code	Generic categories	Main categories
PR	You must let go a little of the fact that you’re sitting at a table with both doctors and psychologists and specialist nurses, but still, it comes down to the fact that experience is competence, too	experience is also competence	Informal competence	Finding appropriate patient representativeness
HPR	It is a different competence base; it is an experience-based competence base	experience-based competence
PR	I joined a Facebook group with 3500 users, partly those who have XXX plus another group those who have XXX … it is a very large group and then I am part of the XXX association, much less activity and information between the members of the national association … there I asked questions and interviewed a few people and got good answers	ask questions and conduct interviews, participate in forums	How to represent	Working methods that facilitate a patient perspective
HPR	a very matter-of-fact way as someone who represents the whole group, she doesn’t just say that “I think this is good” but “We as patients think this is good”. It also signals that she knows others who have been in the same situation, so that she is in some way perceived by the group as actually representing the entire patient group, not just herself.	represent the whole group and not just themselves
PR	I think people listened to me when I conveyed difficulties … and it emerged in a good way over the course of care itself	they listened to me	Influence	Influence of the patient perspective in the clinical pathways
HPR	It has been very important to have him there and … yes, he offers very good viewpoints and can have a different picture than the other members have, who are mainly healthcare staff then, so it is very important to involve him	good viewpoints, different picture

PR = patient representative, HPR = healthcare professional representative