Key negative themes
| Theme and participant examples | ID |
|---|---|
| Calibration difficulties/frustration when equipment ‘fails’ | |
| “Sometimes it would stop working for a few minutes…every 5th day” | (013) |
| “It would sometimes turn off during the night, it sometimes wouldn't connect which took quite a long time to sort out…once or twice a week” | (013) |
| “The battery life…It wasn't very good” | (007) |
| “Do it [calibrate] where you won't be seen or it won't be about midnight when you have to calibrate” | (007) |
| Size and alarms | |
| “Just having this little brick on my arm really…Just the size of it” | (002) |
| “Probably the alarm because they were just really loud” | (010) |
| “It was quite big and I'd quite like to have a slightly littler one” | (012) |
| “Once we had a problem with the pump, it was alarming all the time” | (005a) |
| Accuracy/trust | |
| “Maybe it won't recognise that I have taken quite a lot of insulin before and it would give me more insulin and then I'll end up having a crashing hypo” | (008) |
| “It wasn't the most reliable system…Your bloods weren't always what they said it was” | (001) |
| “It was a bit hit and miss…you couldn't rely on it completely” | (003) |
| “I didn't really trust it because I think for a whole day I was using it, it didn't give any insulin” | (006) |
| Discomfort/painful | |
| “I wasn't allowed to roll on my side or lie on my front because…the thing in my tummy was like, kept beeping and it set off alarms and stuff” | (006) |
| “The implants for the pump, they were annoying…the needle was sore” | (008) |
| “There was one time when I did actually rip the sensor out of my arm after a rowing session, I was just like ‘oh…I just can't’…” | (008) |