Table 4 Fieldwork challenges and lessons learned. MedMinas Project, 2018–2021

Municipalities and participant enrolment

Our first attempt to enrol them was unsuccessful, even providing information and high-quality field materials for eligible municipalities

Despite having previously agreed, some managers and health professionals, when face-to-face with our field team, re-scheduled or refused to participate in the study

Obtaining upfront support and establishing liaisons with relevant key health system actors is crucial to increasing research engagement. Our strategy of involving the state-level collegiate instance of SUS was pivotal

Extensive contact made by the general coordination with the potential participants, explaining the study goals and applicability of results thoroughly and making the team available to them before and during the entire fieldwork, improved the participation rate, especially for managers and health workers since the target sample was fixed

Field team

Providing appropriate individualized and collective training for data collection could not prevent errors and inconsistencies in data entry during the fieldwork, especially regarding prescriptions and dispensed medicines

Recruiting a field team with appropriate skill sets is critical. Most problems could be avoided if the team had a background in pharmacy or related sciences

Interview processes

We knew that the sites of the interviews in the municipalities could be a challenge due to their infrastructure, so we asked managers and health professionals for help in choosing a setting with as little distraction as possible. However, in practice, some interviews got interrupted due to other work demands/competing priorities of the participants

Interviews in the workplace should be conducted in a neutral environment. This can be done by booking rooms separated from professionals’ offices (if possible, in another facility) or scheduling interviews after working hours

Budget

Fieldwork was planned with a reasoned time frame, drawn up via our previous experience conducting similar projects and based on the literature. However, data collection took longer than expected due to medicine stock-outs resulting in additional unanticipated costs

When conducting projects with complex logistics, one must consider the possibility of delays in data collection that will impact the estimated budget. We had the opportunity of additional funding to support the project, but this is not always a possible solution. Budgetary and managerial flexibility must, then, be considered during planning