No. Item	Guide questions/description	Reported in section or described below
Domain 1: Research team and reflexivity
Personal Characteristics
1. Interviewer/facilitator	Which author/s conducted the interview or focus group?	Methods
2. Credentials	What were the researcher’s credentials? E.g. PhD, MD	Title page, Methods, Acknowledgements
3. Occupation	What was their occupation at the time of the study?	Methods
4. Gender	Was the researcher male or female?	Our team includes all
5. Experience and training	What experience or training did the researcher have?	Methods
Relationship with participants
6. Relationship established	Was a relationship established prior to study commencement?	One study author worked in one of the EDs but was not involved in interviews;
7. Participant knowledge of the interviewer	What did the participants know about the researcher? e.g. personal goals, reasons for doing the research	Participants knew interviewer’s role within the research team
8. Interviewer characteristics	What characteristics were reported about the inter viewer/facilitator? e.g. Bias, assumptions, reasons and interests in the research topic	Methods
Domain 2: study design
Theoretical framework
9. Methodological orientation and Theory	What methodological orientation was stated to underpin the study? e.g. grounded theory, discourse analysis, ethnography, phenomenology, content analysis	Methods
Participant selection
10. Sampling	How were participants selected? e.g. purposive, convenience, consecutive, snowball	Methods
11. Method of approach	How were participants approached? e.g. face-toface, telephone, mail, email	Methods
12. Sample size	How many participants were in the study?	Results
13. Non-participation	How many people refused to participate or dropped out? Reasons?	Participants opted-in following a survey or were reached via snowball sampling, there were no optouts or drop-outs
Setting
14. Setting of data collection	Where was the data collected? e.g. home, clinic, workplace	Methods
15. Presence of non-participants	Was anyone else present besides the participants and researchers?	No one else was present for interviews
16. Description of sample	What are the important characteristics of the sample? e.g. demographic data, date	Results
Data collection
17. Interview guide	Were questions, prompts, guides provided by the authors? Was it pilot tested?	Methods
18. Repeat interviews	Were repeat interviews carried out? If yes, how many?	Repeat interviews were not carried out
19. Audio/visual recording	Did the research use audio or visual recording to collect the data?	Methods
20. Field notes	Were field notes made during and/or after the inter view or focus group?	Methods
21. Duration	What was the duration of the interviews or focus group?	Methods
22. Data saturation	Was data saturation discussed?	Methods, Discussion
23. Transcripts returned	Were transcripts returned to participants for comment and/or correction?	Transcripts were not returned to participants
Domain 3: analysis and findings
Data analysis
24. Number of data coders	How many data coders coded the data?	Methods
25. Description of the coding tree	Did authors provide a description of the coding tree?	A coding tree was not used – a codebook was used
26. Derivation of themes	Were themes identified in advance or derived from the data?	Methods
27. Software	What software, if applicable, was used to manage the data?	Dedoose
28. Participant checking	Did participants provide feedback on the findings?	Not at this time
Reporting
29. Quotations presented	Were participant quotations presented to illustrate the themes/findings? Was each quotation identified? e.g. participant number	Results
30. Data and findings consistent	Was there consistency between the data presented and the findings?	Methods, Results, Discussion
31. Clarity of major themes	Were major themes clearly presented in the findings?	Results
32. Clarity of minor themes	Is there a description of diverse cases or discussion of minor themes?	Discussion