Take part in UK-REACH (I-CARE)

Who can take part?


We are inviting you to participate in a study seeking to understand why healthcare workers (HCWs) may wish to leave or change their jobs. In particular, we wish to focus on the experiences of healthcare staff from minoritised groups, especially in terms of ethnicity and migration status. We are calling this study I-CARE (Increasing retention of healthcare staff from ethnic minority groups) and it is a continuation of the UK-REACH study (United Kingdom Research study into Ethnicity And COVID-19 outcomes in Healthcare workers) which started during the pandemic in 2020.

Before you decide whether to take part, it is important that you understand why this research is being done and what it will involve. Please read the following information carefully and discuss it with others if you wish. If you have questions, please contact us at uk-reach@leicester.ac.uk or on 07425 611865.


Participant Information Sheet (PIS) for Managers Interview (Work package 4)


STUDY TITLE: United Kingdom Research study into Ethnicity And COVID-19 outcomes in Healthcare workers: Increasing retention of healthcare staff from ethnic minority groups (UK-REACH - I-CARE)


Co - Principal Investigators: Professor Manish Pareek and Professor Katherine Woolf

Introduction

Thank you for taking the time to read this information.

We are inviting you to participate in a study seeking to understand why healthcare workers (HCWs) may wish to leave or change their jobs. In particular, we wish to focus on the experiences of healthcare staff from minoritised groups, especially in terms of ethnicity and migration status. We are calling this study I-CARE (Increasing retention of healthcare staff from ethnic minority groups) and it is a continuation of the UK-REACH study (United Kingdom Research study into Ethnicity And COVID-19 outcomes in Healthcare workers) which started during the pandemic in 2020. We are keen to hear from managers, as they may offer valuable insights into why staff choose to stay or leave and what organisations are or could be doing to improve retention.

Before you decide whether to take part, it is important that you understand why this research is being done and what it will involve. Please read the following information carefully and discuss it with others if you wish. If you have questions, please contact us at uk-reach@leicester.ac.uk or on 07425 611865.


What is the purpose of the study?

The aim of the I-CARE study is to improve our understanding of the personal and work-related factors that are related to healthcare workers’ intentions to change or leave their jobs. In particular, we wish to understand how these factors might differ for staff from minoritised groups (focusing on ethnicity and migration status), and to explore potential reasons for this. The I-CARE study builds on the UK-REACH study.

UK-REACH was set up to understand how personal (including ethnicity) and work-related factors related to the physical and mental health of healthcare workers and their experiences of working during the COVID-19 pandemic.


Why have I been invited to take part?

We are inviting you to take part in this study as you:

  • Are aged 18 and over;
  • You work in a clinical or non-clinical role in a healthcare setting/the NHS and have managerial responsibility.

We welcome people from all communities and all job roles (clinical and non-clinical) to take part. Since the study is aiming to analyse the reasons that healthcare workers from minoritised communities may be thinking of changing or leaving their jobs, we encourage people from these communities to consider taking part.

We also welcome contributions from those who have recently left their jobs in the NHS as they may be able to provide valuable insights into what contributed to their decision to leave.


What will happen if I decide to take part?

We will ask you to:

  • Register your details (including contact details) on our secure web page.
  • Confirm you have read this information sheet and provide consent to participate in the study using our secure web page, if you are happy to do so.
  • Complete a short demographic questionnaire which will take approximately 5 minutes. We will ask some basic information about you, including your age, ethnicity, job role and also if you plan to leave or have already left your job.
  • On the basis of the information you provide, we will screen your eligibility against our sampling criteria, and if you meet the criteria, you will be invited to take part in an interview.
  • Your decision to participate will be confidential, and anything you say will also be confidential, and the information you give will be anonymised (so no personal data about you is shared).
  • Interviews will be at a time that is convenient to you and most likely to take place in Microsoft Teams, which is a safe online platform approved by the University of Leicester. If there is preference for face-to-face/telephone interviews, this will be taken into consideration where feasible.
  • In the interview, you will be asked several open-ended questions about your perceptions regarding HCWs leaving their NHS jobs, the current attrition scenario, what institutions are doing to retain staff and also your recommendations to improve staff retention.
  • We will record your responses using the Teams feature or use an encrypted voice recorder if doing it face-to-face or telephonically (and will require your consent for this).
  • The interview will take around 45 minutes – 1 hour to complete.
  • After the interview, we will offer you a £25 shopping voucher as a token of our appreciation, on signing a contributor disclaimer form which reiterates the voluntary nature of your participation.

In the invitation email there is a link for you to access the registration form, consent form and demographic questionnaire online.

In the consent form we will ask for your permission to:

  • Contact you again in the future to invite you take part in additional components of this study or other studies. You don’t have to take part – this will be your choice, if/when contacted.


Do I have to take part?

You do not have to take part – it is up to you to decide whether or not you would like to take part. If you do decide to take part you are still free to withdraw at any time without giving a reason. Further information on withdrawing is provided under “What are my choices about how my information is used?”

If you decide to take part, you will be asked to complete a consent form once you have had the opportunity to read this information sheet and ask any questions you might have. You will be able to download an electronic copy of your consent form to keep for your own information.


What are the possible benefits of taking part?

This research is part of the UK-REACH I-CARE study and could help to improve our understanding of why healthcare staff leave or stay in the NHS, particularly those from minoritised groups. The findings could inform policy interventions to help NHS organisations retain staff. However, there may be no direct benefit to you personally.


What are the possible disadvantages of taking part?

There are no known disadvantages or health risks associated with this research. However, there are some questions about sensitive topics that some people may find upsetting – you can choose not to answer any question that you do not feel comfortable answering, and you may stop at any time. The study team has experience of working on/hearing about difficult/sensitive topics and will follow a distress protocol if they identify any signs that you are becoming distressed during the interview and will support you. In addition, on the UK-REACH website, we provide contact details for organisations that provide support for mental health and wellbeing, including some particularly relevant to healthcare workers. You can also contact the study team by telephone or email. Contact details are provided at the start and end of this document.


Who will be able to use my data?

The safety and security of participants’ data is of the utmost importance to the study team. There will be strict mechanisms in place for data storage and access, and you will not be identifiable in research outputs. A small number of the research team will have access to your contact details to arrange, carry out and transcribe interview and make contact with you in the future if you have consented to this.

Your decision to participate will be confidential, and anything you say will also be confidential, and the information you give will be anonymised (so no personal data about you is shared). Your trust/employer will not be told that you have taken part in this research. In discussion with the Co-Principal Investigators and UK-REACH/I-CARE Core Management Group, we may make information from the study, labelled only with unique codes, available to researchers approved by the UK-REACH/I-CARE Core Management Group. This information will not identify you and identifiable information will be kept separate from the data. Approved researchers will be required to adhere to strict data governance procedures detailed on the UK-REACH website


How will we use information about you?

This information will include your name and contact details. People will use this information to do the research or to check your records to make sure that the research is being done properly.

People who do not need to know who you are will not be able to see your name or contact details. Your data will have a code number instead.

The University of Leicester is the sponsor of this research, and is responsible for looking after your information. We will keep all information about you safe and secure by:

  • Keeping your name and contact details separately from your research data and will use these only for future contact by the UK-REACH I-CARE team. A very small number of study team members will have access to your name and contact details, so that we can re-contact you about other aspects of the study.
  • Demographic data will be given a code number instead and will be stored separately from personally identifiable data.
  • Recordings of interviews will be transcribed before analysis. The transcription will be undertaken by a transcribing company that has a Confidentiality Agreement with the research team. The recordings will be deleted once the transcription has successfully taken place.
  • The transcripts will be fully anonymised and no one will be able to identify you from the transcripts.
  • All electronic data will be stored on a password-protected computer file within a secure university file drive. Any paper records will be stored in a locked filing cabinet.
  • Your consent information will be kept separately from your interview transcript so there is no risk of re-identification.
  • Your anonymised data will be stored for up to 6 years from the end of the study and may be used in future ethically approved research. Any collaborators we share our data with will follow our rules about keeping your information safe.
  • We will write our reports in a way that ensures no-one can work out that you took part in the study.
  • Please see our Privacy Notice for further information on how we process your data

What are your choices about how your information is used?

You can stop being part of the study at any time, without giving a reason, but we will keep information about you that we already have. If you wish to withdraw from the study, you can contact the study team by email or telephone (using the details provided), who will confirm and record your wishes to withdraw, and regarding further contact. If you do decide to withdraw, no further data will be collected about and from you. Any information that is already collected and analysed, will remain and be used in the study. You have the right to ask us to remove, change or delete data we hold about you for the purposes of the study. We might not always be able to do this if it means we cannot use your data to do the research. If so, we will tell you why we cannot do this.

No further data collection will be performed and we will not contact you again about this study.

We need to manage your records in specific ways for the research to be reliable. This means that we won’t be able to let you see or change the data we hold about you. You will be able to update your contact details in your UK-REACH account or via the study team.


Where can I find out more about how my information is used?

You can find out more about how we use your information:


What if something goes wrong?

It is unlikely that you will be harmed by taking part in this study. If you wish to complain about any aspect of the way in which you have been approached or treated during the course of this study, please contact the I-CARE research manager (uk-reach@leicester.ac.uk; 07425 611865) who will acknowledge receipt of the complaint, investigate, and report back to you within a reasonable period of time.

If something does go wrong and you are harmed during the research and this is due to someone’s negligence then you may have grounds for legal action for compensation against the University of Leicester but you may have to pay your legal costs. The normal NHS complaints service will still be available to you (if appropriate).


Will the findings of the research by published?

We will publish findings from the research in scientific journals. We will summarise published research on a study website: https://www.uk-reach.org.


Who is organising and funding the research?

This research is led by Professor Manish Pareek at the University of Leicester and Professor Katherine Woolf at University College London (UCL) and is organised through a partnership between academic institutions including University of Surrey, University of Oxford, University of Glasgow, and London North West University Healthcare NHS Trust. The I-CARE study has been supported by funding from the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR).


How was the study reviewed?

This study has been reviewed and approved by an independent group of people called a Research Ethics Committee (University of Leicester). All research that involves NHS patients or staff, information from NHS medical records or uses NHS premises or facilities must be approved by an NHS Research Ethics Committee before it goes ahead. Approval does not guarantee that you will not come to any harm if you take part. However, approval means that the committee is satisfied that your rights will be respected, that any risks have been reduced to a minimum and balanced against possible benefits and that you have been given sufficient information on which to make an informed decision.

Thank you for reading this information sheet.

For Further information, please contact the UK-REACH I-CARE study team at:

Email: uk-reach@leicester.ac.uk

Tel: 07425 611865

UK-REACH I-CARE Managers Interview PIS (WP4)_V1.2_26/03/2025

Participant Information Sheet (PIS) for HCW Interview (Work package 4)


STUDY TITLE: United Kingdom Research study into Ethnicity And COVID-19 outcomes in Healthcare workers: Increasing retention of healthcare staff from ethnic minority groups (UK-REACH - I-CARE)


Co - Principal Investigators: Professor Manish Pareek and Professor Katherine Woolf

Introduction

Thank you for taking the time to read this information.

We are inviting you to participate in a study seeking to understand why healthcare workers (HCWs) may wish to leave or change their jobs. In particular, we wish to focus on the experiences of healthcare staff from minoritised groups, especially in terms of ethnicity and migration status. We are calling this study I-CARE (Increasing retention of healthcare staff from ethnic minority groups) and it is a continuation of the UK-REACH study (United Kingdom Research study into Ethnicity And COVID-19 outcomes in Healthcare workers) which started during the pandemic in 2020.

Before you decide whether to take part, it is important that you understand why this research is being done and what it will involve. Please read the following information carefully and discuss it with others if you wish. If you have questions, please contact us at uk-reach@leicester.ac.uk or on 07425 611865.


What is the purpose of the study?

The aim of the I-CARE study is to improve our understanding of the personal and work-related factors that are related to healthcare workers’ intentions to change or leave their jobs. In particular, we wish to understand how these factors might differ for staff from minoritised groups (focusing on ethnicity and migration status), and to explore potential reasons for this. The I-CARE study builds on the UK-REACH study.

UK-REACH was set up to understand how personal (including ethnicity) and work-related factors related to the physical and mental health of healthcare workers and their experiences of working during the COVID-19 pandemic.


Why have I been invited to take part?

We are inviting you to take part in this study as you:

  • Are aged 18 and over;
  • Currently work or have recently worked in the NHS;
  • You are thinking of changing or leaving your job or have already left your NHS job.

We welcome people from all communities and all job roles (clinical and non-clinical) to take part. Since the study is aiming to analyse the reasons that healthcare workers from minoritised communities may be thinking of changing or leaving their jobs, we encourage people from these communities to consider taking part.

We also welcome contributions from those who have recently left their jobs in the NHS as they may be able to provide valuable insights into what contributed to their decision to leave.


What will happen if I decide to take part?

We will ask you to:

  • Register your details (including contact details) on our secure web page.
  • Confirm you have read this information sheet and provide consent to participate in the study using our secure web page, if you are happy to do so.
  • Complete a short demographic questionnaire which will take approximately 5 minutes. We will ask some basic information about you, including your age, ethnicity, job role and also if you plan to leave or have already left your job.
  • On the basis of the information you provide, we will screen your eligibility against our sampling criteria, and if you meet the criteria, you will be invited to take part in an interview.
  • Your decision to participate will be confidential, and anything you say will also be confidential, and the information you give will be anonymised (so no personal data about you is shared).
  • Interviews will be at a time that is convenient to you and most likely to take place in Microsoft Teams, which is a safe online platform approved by the University of Leicester. If there is preference for face-to-face/telephone interviews, this will be taken into consideration where feasible.
  • In the interview, you will be asked several open-ended questions regarding your perceptions about different aspects of your job, intention to leave, the impact this has/will have on your personal and professional life and finally your views about improving staff retention.
  • We will record your responses using the Teams feature or use an encrypted voice recorder if doing it face-to-face or telephonically (and will require your consent for this).
  • The interview will take around 45 minutes – 1 hour to complete.
  • The interviews will primarily be conducted in English however if you feel that language will be a significant barrier for you in expressing yourself during the interview, we might be able to arrange for an interpreter.
  • After the interview, we will offer you a £25 shopping voucher as a token of our appreciation, on signing a contributor disclaimer form which reiterates the voluntary nature of your participation.

In the invitation email there is a link for you to access the registration form, consent form and demographic questionnaire online.

In the consent form we will ask for your permission to:

  • Contact you again in the future to invite you take part in additional components of this study or other studies. You don’t have to take part – this will be your choice, if/when contacted.


Do I have to take part?

You do not have to take part – it is up to you to decide whether or not you would like to take part. If you do decide to take part you are still free to withdraw at any time without giving a reason. Further information on withdrawing is provided under “What are my choices about how my information is used?”

If you decide to take part, you will be asked to complete a consent form once you have had the opportunity to read this information sheet and ask any questions you might have. You will be able to download an electronic copy of your consent form to keep for your own information.


What are the possible benefits of taking part?

This research is part of the UK-REACH I-CARE study and could help to improve our understanding of why healthcare staff leave or stay in the NHS, particularly those from minoritised groups. The findings could inform policy interventions to help NHS organisations retain staff. However, there may be no direct benefit to you personally.


What are the possible disadvantages of taking part?

There are no known disadvantages or health risks associated with this research. However, there are some questions about sensitive topics that some people may find upsetting – you can choose not to answer any question that you do not feel comfortable answering, and you may stop at any time. The study team has experience of working on/hearing about difficult/sensitive topics and will follow a distress protocol if they identify any signs that you are becoming distressed during the interview and will support you. In addition, on the UK-REACH website, we provide contact details for organisations that provide support for mental health and wellbeing, including some particularly relevant to healthcare workers. You can also contact the study team by telephone or email. Contact details are provided at the start and end of this document.


Who will be able to use my data?

The safety and security of participants’ data is of the utmost importance to the study team. There will be strict mechanisms in place for data storage and access, and you will not be identifiable in research outputs. A small number of the research team will have access to your contact details to arrange, carry out and transcribe interview and make contact with you in the future if you have consented to this.

Your decision to participate will be confidential, and anything you say will also be confidential, and the information you give will be anonymised (so no personal data about you is shared). Your trust/employer will not be told that you have taken part in this research. In discussion with the Co-Principal Investigators and UK-REACH/I-CARE Core Management Group, we may make information from the study, labelled only with unique codes, available to researchers approved by the UK-REACH/I-CARE Core Management Group. This information will not identify you and identifiable information will be kept separate from the data. Approved researchers will be required to adhere to strict data governance procedures detailed on the UK-REACH website


How will we use information about you?

This information will include your name and contact details. People will use this information to do the research or to check your records to make sure that the research is being done properly.

People who do not need to know who you are will not be able to see your name or contact details. Your data will have a code number instead.

The University of Leicester is the sponsor of this research, and is responsible for looking after your information. We will keep all information about you safe and secure by:

  • Keeping your name and contact details separately from your research data and will use these only for future contact by the UK-REACH I-CARE team. A very small number of study team members will have access to your name and contact details, so that we can re-contact you about other aspects of the study.
  • Demographic data will be given a code number instead and will be stored separately from personally identifiable data.
  • Recordings of interviews will be transcribed before analysis. The transcription will be undertaken by a transcribing company that has a Confidentiality Agreement with the research team. The recordings will be deleted once the transcription has successfully taken place.
  • The transcripts will be fully anonymised and no one will be able to identify you from the transcripts.
  • All electronic data will be stored on a password-protected computer file within a secure university file drive. Any paper records will be stored in a locked filing cabinet.
  • Your consent information will be kept separately from your interview transcript so there is no risk of re-identification.
  • Your anonymised data will be stored for up to 6 years from the end of the study and may be used in future ethically approved research. Any collaborators we share our data with will follow our rules about keeping your information safe.
  • We will write our reports in a way that ensures no-one can work out that you took part in the study.
  • Please see our Privacy Notice for further information on how we process your data

What are your choices about how your information is used?

You can stop being part of the study at any time, without giving a reason, but we will keep information about you that we already have. If you wish to withdraw from the study, you can contact the study team by email or telephone (using the details provided), who will confirm and record your wishes to withdraw, and regarding further contact. If you do decide to withdraw, no further data will be collected about and from you. Any information that is already collected and analysed, will remain and be used in the study. You have the right to ask us to remove, change or delete data we hold about you for the purposes of the study. We might not always be able to do this if it means we cannot use your data to do the research. If so, we will tell you why we cannot do this.

No further data collection will be performed and we will not contact you again about this study.

We need to manage your records in specific ways for the research to be reliable. This means that we won’t be able to let you see or change the data we hold about you. You will be able to update your contact details in your UK-REACH account or via the study team.


Where can I find out more about how my information is used?

You can find out more about how we use your information:


What if something goes wrong?

It is unlikely that you will be harmed by taking part in this study. If you wish to complain about any aspect of the way in which you have been approached or treated during the course of this study, please contact the I-CARE research manager (uk-reach@leicester.ac.uk; 07425 611865) who will acknowledge receipt of the complaint, investigate, and report back to you within a reasonable period of time.

If something does go wrong and you are harmed during the research and this is due to someone’s negligence then you may have grounds for legal action for compensation against the University of Leicester but you may have to pay your legal costs. The normal NHS complaints service will still be available to you (if appropriate).


Will the findings of the research by published?

We will publish findings from the research in scientific journals. We will summarise published research on a study website: https://www.uk-reach.org.


Who is organising and funding the research?

This research is led by Professor Manish Pareek at the University of Leicester and Professor Katherine Woolf at University College London (UCL) and is organised through a partnership between academic institutions including University of Surrey, University of Oxford, University of Glasgow, and London North West University Healthcare NHS Trust. The I-CARE study has been supported by funding from the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR).


How was the study reviewed?

This study has been reviewed and approved by an independent group of people called a Research Ethics Committee (University of Leicester). All research that involves NHS patients or staff, information from NHS medical records or uses NHS premises or facilities must be approved by an NHS Research Ethics Committee before it goes ahead. Approval does not guarantee that you will not come to any harm if you take part. However, approval means that the committee is satisfied that your rights will be respected, that any risks have been reduced to a minimum and balanced against possible benefits and that you have been given sufficient information on which to make an informed decision.

Thank you for reading this information sheet.

For Further information, please contact the UK-REACH I-CARE study team at:

Email: uk-reach@leicester.ac.uk

Tel: 07425 611865

UK-REACH I-CARE HCW PIS (WP4)_V1.2_26/03/2025

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This study is supported by a grant to the University of Leicester from the MRC-UK Research and Innovation, and National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) rapid response panel to tackle COVID-19 and by core funding provided by NIHR Leicester Biomedical Research Centre - a partnership between the University of Leicester and University Hospitals of Leicester NHS Trust. REACHOUT is supported by the NHS race and health observatory. The I-CARE project (NIHR157268) is funded by the NIHR Health and Social Care Delivery Research (HSDR) programme.

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