The study is designed in the form of a clinician validated online questionnaire (conducted via Qualitrics.com), with participants recruited anonymously. Integrated care boards (ICB) from across the country will be sent an online link to the questionnaire via email and encouraged to share amongst clinicians and allied health care providers within their ICB. Where participants open the study web address (via an anonymous link or QR code) they will be taken to the participant information sheet which aims to provide potential participants with more information regarding the study, its aims, benefits, risks and potential conflicts of interests. Participants will then be asked to consent to the study online following which they will be asked to complete an online questionnaire, which aims to take participants no more than fifteen minutes to complete. As an added non obligatory component, participants who complete the study, will be asked if they are willing to partake in an online focus group of uptown 6 participants in the future, to further discuss the study and gain a further understanding of factors which would empower participants to improve their individual health and diabetes control. Those participants will be asked to provide a contact email address, in order for the study organisers to make contact with the participant with regards to potential focus groups in the future. Participation is completely voluntary and participants may change their decision at any time. Participants will be consented again for their participation in the focus groups electronically prior to the focus group.Focus groups will be conducted via Microsoft Teams and will concentrate on key findings of the online questionnaire data to further understand clinician perspectives of how diabetes is currently managed and ways in which care could be improved upon. They will be of no longer than 60 minutes in duration each.
Focus groups will be audio recorded and be transcribed by the study organisers within 7 days of the focus group, following which the recording will be deleted. Transcribed focus groups will be anonymised and will be stored electronically at Imperial College London in a password protected file. Data will be analysed and submitted in the form of a research paper to a peer reviewed scientific journal.
