Table 2.

Key theme 1 – educational needs and training topics, exemplar quotations

Master theme	Subtheme	Example
COPD-specific knowledge	Anatomy and physiology	“If you were running this for people who’d never been involved in patients with COPD you’d have to have longer than a day to teach them about the disease” [Occupational therapist, secondary care]
	Exacerbations and disease progression	“Thinking about advanced disease […] that’s quite a shock and I don’t think we’re confident to discuss that with them” [Physiotherapist, secondary care]
	Exercise	“I’m not an expert in exercising or anything like that so all of it really is stuff that I could probably do with a bit more in depth information on” [Respiratory nurse, secondary care]
	Sex and relationships	“I think the area on relationships and talking about sex is [something] that a lot of people don’t cover and feel uncomfortable covering” [Nurse practitioner, primary care]
	Diet and eating	“I wouldn’t be brilliant at food, trying to get patients to eat a nice healthy diet” [Respiratory nurse, secondary care]
	Breathing and inhaler techniques	“It’s always good just to go over [inhaler techniques] with you to make sure you are right because things change and these are the sort of things you need to pass on to your patients” [Respiratory nurse, secondary care]
	Oxygen and traveling	“People ask about taking oxygen on holiday and that’s normally something I have to go off and find out rather than just having the knowledge there” [Physiotherapist, secondary care]
	Awareness of resources	“I never really know what’s out there for them [carers for people with COPD]” [Community respiratory nurse]
Delivery of manual	How to follow stages	“What I would want to know is do they have to follow stage one, two, three and four or can they do stage one, look at stage three – can it be flexible?” [Respiratory nurse, secondary care]
	Action plan	“The bit that I would want to see quite a lot more on is definitely the action plan, and about doing an action plan with the patient” [Nurse, secondary care]
Outcome measures	Administration	“[With] the outcome measures, if you’ve not been involved in rehabilitation the chances are you won’t be familiar with how you do [them]” [Physiotherapist, secondary care]
	Interpretation	“What would I be looking for to show that there had been a change? It’s just not something that we’d do” [Respiratory nurse, secondary care]
Communication skills	Confidence to listen	“You need to be able to listen to the patient about what they want” [Occupational therapist, secondary care]
	Imparting information	“A lot of the ideas that are second nature to you are absolutely brand new to patients” [Respiratory nurse, secondary care]
	Appropriate language	“A lot of the terminology that is second nature to you is absolutely brand new to patients” [Nurse practitioner, primary care]
	Dealing with difficult emotions	“I get a lot of anger from people who did give up smoking but […] five years down the line after quitting smoking they’ve still got a diagnosis of COPD and they didn’t realise that that was a potential issue” [Respiratory nurse, secondary care]