Table 1 Description of experiential thematic analysis process

1. Familiarisation

Audio recordings of focus group discussions were heard whilst reading transcripts to confirm accuracy of the transcripts and to commence the familiarisation process. Potential codes and key statements of interest were noted throughout this process.

2. Coding

Coding was formally conducted using NVivo software [22]. Codes were devised to capture interesting and relevant features of the data in concise and brief phrases or descriptive words. Codes can be seen in Fig. 1. This process continued until all relevant data were captured in at least one code.

3. Initial themes

Codes were grouped and re-grouped where it appeared there was shared or complementary meaning, concepts or key ideas. This process was iterative and discussed amongst the group via online and in-person group discussions and shared documents.

4. Reviewing and developing themes

Using the preliminary clusters of codes, themes and sub-themes were developed. Initially, two major themes were identified with multiple sub-themes mostly appearing to be a ‘good-fit’ for these themes. As the review progressed, these themes did not adequately explain the data, and sub-themes were re-distributed amongst three themes which appear to capture all the key concepts and ideas that were identified.

5. Refining, defining and re-naming themes

In re-fining and defining sub-themes and themes, it was identified that different words have different common meanings amongst health and arts focused groups (for example ‘role’: role in a team (health) vs character (performing arts)). Discussions about this led to the styling of the theme names. Sub-theme names are all short quotes from the raw data. These were carefully selected to represent the key features and concepts identified from the collated data.

6. Producing the report

ED led the writing of the report and used qualitative research reporting guidelines to support this process [23, 24]. TC and RM assisted with bridging language differences between the health and performing arts disciplines, and read and re-read transcripts to ensure no key data was absent in the final reporting of themes. All authors participated in reviewing and re-drafting the final report, providing valuable feedback on wording and descriptions of concepts.