Table 2.

Qualitative themes and illustrative quotations from interviews

Themes	Illustrative quotations
Repurposed: Physicians describing the changing roles and responsibilities of staff to support telemedicine	“There’s been issues with some of our staff being deployed to other locations, so we’re having staff doing work that either they wouldn’t ordinarily do or is an overload of what their typical responsibilities are because they’re having to cover for other people…So everybody’s kind of shifted in other ways and pulled and kind of stretched a little bit….” (GIM, 10 years in practice) “And so we had to repurpose [staff] to doing kind of virtual rooming processes prior to us seeing them and trying to get whether it be paperwork and rating scales filled out or whether it be [a] vital from home measurements and whatever else done.” (GIM, 7 years in practice)
Disconnected: Physicians describing how being detached from other staff members effects team continuity	“I did not go into this field because I like to work in isolation. This is a collaborative project. I need to have a team because my MA (medical assistant) hears things that I wouldn’t hear and I hear things that my MA wouldn’t hear[….] [T]his is a collaborative affair and I’m completely alone and isolated in my dining room and house and community.” (GIM, 21 years in practice) “So just things like that where kind of the erosion of that cohesion of a team now became a lot more disjointed, I guess.” (FM, 15 years in practice)
Difficulty Communicating: Physicians describing the challenges of communicating with staff	“So the support staff has trouble communicating with me, and I have trouble communicating with them.” (FM, 10 years in practice) “[…] I missed that communication. I mean, I still sign out patients, I call them my colleagues on the phone, etc. But it just was much more fluid. So, I mean, basically I missed the office environment.” (Pediatrics, 35 years in practice)
Demoralized: Physicians describing the impact of COVID-19 on physician and staff morale	“[The COVID-19 pandemic] has affected just morale in general because we just don’t have enough people to help us and those people that are here are some of our best, [...] you know, they can only do so much, like no one can be on 100% all the time. And so, you just see morale issues.” (FM, 1 year in practice) “And so, our workforce is dramatically being impacted, I would say, by [workforce hospitalizations] and it is adversely affecting our ability to deliver high quality care...” (FM, 5 years in practice)