Professional service providers
For each of the four isPO care networks, a focus group with the network-internal professional service providers on the care level took place in the respective care network hospitals. Moreover, all four network coordinators were interviewed during an isPO quality workshop or in their network hospital. Two members of the evaluation team, acting as head and co-moderator, conducted these eight data collections within the first year of implementation. The semi-structured interview guidelines were similar and primarily contained questions on the implementation of the new form of care isPO and the communication and cooperation within isPO. The data collection described in the following occurred in the second year of implementation. The interviews with the four head psycho-oncologists occurred during the COVID-19 pandemic and were conducted via telephone. Topics of the interview guideline were ‘communication’, ‘assessment of the isPO care concept’, and ‘evaluation of changes due to the implementation of isPO’. The same evaluator conducted the four data collections per person group (professional service providers, network coordinators, and head psycho-oncologists).Finally, one cross-network focus group each was performed with professional isPO service providers on the care level and the managerial level. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic and high workload, the participants could not travel on business for the focus groups. Therefore, they were conducted using video conferencing. In addition to the semi-structured interview guideline, a PowerPoint presentation was prepared with slides for each key question. The prepared topics were ‘experiences towards the implementability of isPO during the different phases’, ‘facilitators for implementation’, ‘barriers for implementation’, and ‘prerequisites for the dissemination of isPO into routine care’. Three evaluators conducted the focus group: (1) a head moderator, (2) a recorder who filled in the PowerPoint presentation with keywords from the participants’ statements, and (3) a technical supporter who also managed the chat posts.Before every data collection, participants were informed about the procedure, and written consent was obtained. All interviews and focus groups described above were audiotaped. A professional service transcribed the audio material verbatim. For the focus groups, protocols for a change of speaker were created to facilitate the transcription. Before data analysis, transcripts were anonymised using replacements for names of persons and network locations; for example, 