Table 3.

Topic guide for participant interviews

Questions	Prompts/clarifications
Looking back to a time when you hadn’t yet started dialysis (i.e. when you were still under follow-up at pre-dialysis clinic), what were your expectations from dialysis?	Did you have any prior concerns about starting dialysis? What changes were you expecting dialysis would bring to your lifestyle or living arrangements? What changes were you expecting dialysis would bring to your symptoms?
What did you think about being approached for participation in the study?	You were approached in …………. (clinical setting), by ………… (study personnel), how did you find the experience? Would you suggest we did anything differently when approaching participants for the study in future? What went well? What could be improved?
What were the main reasons you said yes to participation in the study?	Did you discuss the study with your family? Did you discuss the study with other health professionals?
Did you have any concerns at the start about participating in the study?	Do you think your concerns were adequately addressed? In hindsight, what do you think we could have been done differently to pre-empt and address these concerns?
What are the main things that you got from the study?	Do you think there have been any advantages to taking part in the study?
Did you experience any problems?	How did the problem affect you? How did the problem affect your family/carers? In hindsight, what do you think could have been done to avoid this problem?
What changes, if any, do you think we need to make to the dialysis programme (the ‘incremental dialysis’) itself?	In incremental dialysis, you initially receive treatment twice weekly at shorter durations than usual, then your treatment is increased gradually over 3 months. I would like to get your thoughts on this programme: When you first started dialysis, did you notice an immediate change in how you felt? Were your symptoms changing with increasing dialysis (for better or worse)? You are now on three-times weekly full-length dialysis. With hindsight, did you have any symptoms previously that you think could have been because of less frequent dialysis?
The study included several additional procedures and tests that are not offered routinely to dialysis patients (these included questionnaires and urine collections). How did you find completing those tests?	Anything to report for the 24-h urine collections? Anything to report for the quality of life questionnaires? In future studies, should these tests be conducted more often, less often or at the same number of times as in this study?
Would you suggest we did anything differently in this study?	What changes do you think we need to make to the study overall to improve the incremental dialysis regime?
Would you recommend the study to other patients in future?	What advice would you give to someone who is about to start dialysis treatment and is offered a chance to start dialysis incrementally as part of a research study