Overcoming challenges in undertaking research interviews during the COVID pandemic

Implementation of Evidence-based Practice (EBP) is essential in ensuring high quality healthcare at minimum cost. Interprofessional collaboration has been identified as an essential element for the successful implementation of EBP. I chose to explore the experiences of advanced nurse and midwife practitioners of interprofessional collaboration when implementing EBP using Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA), a qualitative research approach which provides detailed examination of personal lived experience. Semi-structured interviews are the most commonly used data collection method in IPA and face-to face interviewing is regarded as the gold standard. I therefore opted to conduct face-to-face interviews with participants from one region in Ireland. Having been granted ethical approval, I began recruitment and undertook one interview. However, the onset of the COVID 19 pandemic resulted in further interviews being suspended and participant recruitment being curtailed. In order to progress my research, I opted to use online interviewing and to extend participant recruitment to two other regions. However, because of the pandemic many ethics committees had temporarily suspended review of applications and I consequently experienced delays in securing the required ethical approval. Despite encountering challenges, I succeeded in interviewing ten participants from a range of practice settings and completed the study. Use of the IPA framework enabled new knowledge and insights about advanced nurse and midwife practitioners’ experiences of interprofessional collaboration to be revealed.