Table 1

Study characteristics of the included studies

First author (year)	Study design	Country	Setting	Type of disease	Sample size (response rate (%))
Quantitative study design
Target group: patients
Au (2012)18	Experimental Longitudinal Prospective	USA	Outpatient clinic	COPD	306 (81)
Heffner (1997)21	Experimental Longitudinal Prospective	USA	Outpatient clinic	Chronic lung diseases	93 (ns)*
Heffner (1996)22	Observational Cross-sectional Retrospective	USA	Outpatient clinic	Chronic lung diseases	105 (100)
Janssen (2011)23†	Observational Cross-sectional Retrospective	NL/USA	Outpatient clinic	COPD	513 (ns)*
Sawicki (2008)26	Observational Cross-sectional Retrospective	USA	Outpatient clinic	Cystic fibrosis	234 (77)
Target group: patients and healthcare professionals
Janssen (2011)24	Observational Cross-sectional Retrospective	NL	Outpatient clinic	COPD	105 patients (63), 101 HCPs (96)
Knauft (2005)25	Observational Cross-sectional Retrospective	USA	Outpatient clinic	COPD	115 patients (40), 56 HCPs (86)
Target group: healthcare professionals
Gaspar (2014)19	Observational Cross-sectional Retrospective	Portugal	Inpatient and outpatient clinic	COPD	136 (29)
Heffner (1996)20	Observational Cross-sectional Retrospective	USA	Outpatient clinic	Chronic lung diseases	218 (63)
Smith (2014)27	Observational Cross-sectional Retrospective	Australia	Inpatient clinic	COPD	17 (41)
Qualitative study design
Target group: patients
Brown (2012)30	Semistructured interviews	Australia	Outpatient clinic	COPD	15
Dellon (2010)28	Semistructured interviews	USA	Inpatient clinic	Cystic fibrosis	36
MacPherson (2013)36	Semistructured interviews	UK	Inpatient clinic, GP practices	COPD	10
Seamark (2012)34	Semistructured interviews	UK	Inpatient clinic	COPD	16
Simpson (2011)35	Semistructured interviews	Canada	Outpatient clinic	COPD	8
Nguyen (2013)33	Qualitative descriptive	Canada	Outpatient clinic	COPD	12
Burge (2013)37	Prospective semistructured interviews	Australia	Inpatient and outpatient clinic	Chronic lung diseases	67
Target group: patients and healthcare professionals
Bajwah (2013)38	Semistructured interviews	UK	Inpatient clinic	PIF-ILD	8 patients 6 HCPs
Hajizadeh (2015)29	Semistructured interviews	USA	Outpatient clinic	Chronic lung diseases	11 patients five physicians
Target group: healthcare professionals
Crawford (2010)31	Semistructured interviews	UK	Inpatient clinic	COPD	7
Gott (2009)32	Focus group	UK	GP practices	COPD	39

*ns=response rate not specified.
†Data of a part of the included patients in this study were also used in the analysis of the study by Jansen et al. 24
COPD, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease; GP, general practitioner; PIF-ILD, progressive idiopathic fibrotic interstitial lung disease; NL, the Netherlands.