Table 5.

Results of the Interviews with Project Leaders

Overarching themes	Nested categories	Excerpts
Project Deliverables	Scientific contribution	Two articles, I did 4–5 oral presentations and an international conference, a poster presentation. There was something produced now that is available on YouTube and Internet site that physios, OTs and the general population can see.
	Training and development	It demystified what research was and made it more accessible. I feel more confident answering patients’ questions. I feel more confident in my abilities to go get the information. Being an agent of change in terms of pushing the team here, we all know there’s a positive to doing it, but now I have the back-up, the information to back it up. It’s also the people that you meet and you’re growing your network. So, I think that helped my career. I don’t know if it’s a career, but it did help my academic CV to improve.
	Increased awareness of best practices	Now there’s more formal kind of processes in place to incorporate the knowledge and the expertise of the patients into decision-making. It had an impact on the psychologists and physicians I work with, […] the overall care of the team, I like to say, has changed. We didn’t change the world, but maybe it started to bring ideas or reminded physios that this was a hot topic and something to think about. Awareness increase, that could be my outcome. The awareness of clinicians was a bit greater after the project. Clinical outcomes are hard… for the clinical side, I have to say, it didn’t change much.
	Step in a larger effort	Getting the pilot, like a small part of the project started, so after you can have some data to show to bigger grants, so, a first step, a good first step. I feel like I just did one piece on a big puzzle that is way too big to handle by myself.
	Difficulty measuring clinical changes	It’s hard to say sometimes, because you never know, people what they’re gonna take with them and how they’re going to apply that in their clinical practice. I brought the results of our scoping review and shared our results with the participants. Did they integrate that knowledge? Did it lead to a change in their practice? I don’t know for sure. Change does not happen within three months, only within a year, two years, and we don’t have any way to capture that. You don’t have time to grow with the project.
Exploration of partnership dynamics	Shared leadership	I think it was a good partnership because I brought my reflection, my mind, my reflexivity from clinical practice. And they were willing to help me out with the research background, to make sure my research was well-thought and would be strong research proposal. Power issues were related to hierarchies that emerged based on perceived education, knowledge, status of different stakeholder.
	Researcher as the leader	So when you don’t know the process, you need somebody to guide you and that’s what the mentor was there for, for me. Guidance. Every step of the way. Everything was discussed with me, but I didn’t coordinate what was going on […] I didn’t have to worry about… all the questions about feasibility and reliability. Everything was dealt with by the research department, with the researcher.
	Clinician as the leader	I was technically the leader, so as soon as she suggested the idea, I was definitely on board and I was always referring to her as a consultant. It was kind of a tacit agreement that I was responsible for the project and I was to approach them with questions.
	Ideal partnership	If you can use their expertise, that’s going to motivate them. […] And just knowing that the researchers will be there to support them in what is not their area of expertise. A straight goal from the start, like everyone knew what we were doing. […] what are the goals? What are the resources? What are barriers? What are the actual facilitators? And the timeline of the project. So everyone knew exactly, where we were going, and I tried to detail their contribution individually, from the start, to make sure that everyone knew their role in the project. An ideal partnership is one where […] people are excited about doing it. It’s meaningful to them.
Facilitators of effective IKT	Being motivated to participate in research	[The PI] was the head of that committee at the time. So I just go to her and say, well this interests me if you have anything that comes up in the future. I wanted to offer the best services possible, I wanted to develop something that would be useful to somebody. “What makes me all excited is the tangible outcome that is at the end [...] to take that and then to apply that into clinical practice.” I was also interested in the research part and that was my incentive to be so invested in the project. If you’re not really interested in the research world, […] I can see why it would be challenging.
	Institutional support	I think the motivation of clinicians is there, but the structure of the environment, the working environment doesn’t allow them to get involved in research. So, if you have, if the institution allows for research and allows time and facilitates this for clinicians, then it’s a win-win situation.
	The proximity of researchers	To have researchers on the premises, [...] around you, around your environment, for me was a big positive, was a motivation. Having a researcher right next to your office is gold […] closeness is a key.
	Previous research experience	I think clinicians need to get used to research for it to be interesting, and not to be too much intimidating. [previous research experience] gave me the motivation, the bug for research. After that, it was like, oh okay let’s do more research