Table 1 Steps of data analysis by Graneheim and Lundman (2004) method

1

Collecting data

Conducting face-to-face and in-person interviews, conducting complementary interviews, an audio recording of interviews

2

Word-by-word transcript of each interview

Frequent listening to interviews and transcribing it word by word

3

Reading the text of the interview to understand its main content and to extract the meaning units

Re-reading the content to gain a general and in-depth perception of the participants’ statements and extract the meaning units

4

Determining and coding the meaning units

Examining participants’ explanations and determining meaningful sentences and producing codes

5

Classification of primary codes

The obtained concepts were classified into specific categories (based on the similarity of the concepts).

6

Identify the content hidden in the heart of the data

Extracting important explanations and giving meaning to them with unique concepts (expressing the meaning of essential parts) and finally clearly and unambiguously expressing the challenges of nurses in the study.