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Table 3 Main category “background to program participation” (themes A-D)

From: Digital rectal examination skills: first training experiences, the motives and attitudes of standardized patients

Themes

Quotations

Theme A) Motives for participating in training

“The interest, because I enjoy working with students and simply out of interest in medical problems” (SP4)

“It just interested me purely from the medical perspective and how one deals with it.” (SP 1)

“… I didn’t know exactly what I was letting myself in for and I thought I could imagine myself doing it and because I don’t have any fear of contact in that way and my body can be used for medical purposes so to speak as long as it doesn’t do me any harm, and after I’d assured myself that it is, or could be, a kind of a routine examination I didn’t see any problem with it.” (SP 2)

“…I’ve got the time to do it and it’s also very informative for me, I have to say I learned an unbelievable amount.” (SP 3)

Theme B) Views, expectations, feelings prior to the training

“So mixed feelings, curiosity, and I’ll see, if it’s too much for me then I’ll say no, I don’t want to have it done, so in advance I’ve already taken the freedom to say no or I don’t want to do it because it goes beyond my limits or because I don’t want to do it like this.” (SP 4)

“It was similar to how I imagined it, I was a bit scared that students would already be examining us today, but otherwise I didn’t give it much thought.” (SP 3)

“…in any case I didn’t know what this digital rectal examination area was like and so I was really interested when I flicked through this manual again to see what exactly happens as I have to say, in advance I dealt with it very unknowingly, I knew it was coming but I didn’t know what it is, but then I read through it in advance and I left the option open that if I find it goes too far somehow then I can just go, I mean nobody is forcing me into anything.” (SP 2)

“Well, because I knew some of the people involved I trusted that they would arrange it appropriately, so I had a certain trust (…) expectations that I’d learn something from it.” (SP 1)

Theme C) Talking to others about participation

“I think that maybe other people have reservations and you don’t necessarily have to arouse them, I mean, you don’t have to justify yourself.” (SP 3)

“Because maybe it would have been indiscrete to talk about something like this (….) that other people would have been rather piqued.” (SP 1)

“For some people definitely because of a lack of understanding, because it would be stressful to constantly discuss the same theme with different people or to clarify the same questions which I’ve already answered in my own mind, and I don’t have to justify myself as it were, but rather if it comes to it I can easily talk to anybody about it but it is not that I really want everybody to know that I’m doing something like this or that I’ve got the courage or whatever.” (SP2)

“… yes, I wanted to experience it myself before I (…) know whether I want to talk about it.” (SP 2)

“Most people looked at me really funny and said you’re letting that be done to you and then I said, sure, it’s interesting and it’s knowledge that you have and I think it’s good to be able to judge, if another doctor does it with me maybe, what it’s like and whether he’s doing everything.” (SP 4)

“With my friend (…) but at any rate I didn’t bring it up, so they know that I’m doing this j- doing this this job (…) but I didn’t go into detail.” (SP 2)