Table 2 Overview of the thematic content analysis process, stage one to six, guided by Newell and Burnard [15]

Stage one

Notes were made after each interview regarding the topics talked about during the interview. This memo was a short note of an idea, theory, thought or feeling that occurred to the researchers. The idea of notes is similar to that of keeping field notes i.e. the memos are useful when writing a report.

Stage two

The interview text and notes were read searching for general themes that appear in the transcripts. The aim was in focus and the data was becoming well known. General notes were written at this stage for example. There seem to be discussions about students' and preceptors' attitudes to academic versus clinical practice.

Stage three

The researchers read through the interview texts several times and headings were written down to describe different aspects of the content. In this stage the so called 'open coding' was used; words and phrases were written in the margin of the transcripts and summarise or categorise what is being said in the text. Data were categorised i.e. the text was reduced and the researchers made judgements of the reductions.

Stage four

A number of categories were overlapping. Some of the categories were so similar that several of the 'open codes' could be placed together under higher order codes. This meant that the codes were reduced. A smaller set of category codes was developed. More than 12 final categories in any project are not ideal since it will be difficult to keep in mind the differences between them.

Stage five

In this stage, we returned to the interview text supplied with the shortened list of category codes. Thereafter, the category codes were separated in different sections.

Stage six

The organised data formed the material from which this qualitative report is written.