Table 1 Thematic framework highlighting the major themes and subthemes summarizing healthcare and administrative staff personal experiences

Theme 1: Staff’s affects linked to the patients’ journey and their situation in the asylum system

 Subthemes

  • Feeling sad, angry, disgusted and stunned when being confronted to the patients’ history and migratory journey (being touched by their patients’ traumatic stories)

  • Views, affect and impact of the asylum sand social systems: feelings of powerlessness, anger and injustice (the hard conditions of the asylum and social systems)

  • Emotional burden, “a sort of moral exhaustion”: feeling deeply marked by the patients’ stories with personal and professional consequences (accumulation of burden, difficulties to conduct consultations and to find work-life balance)

Theme 2: Difficulties and challenges

 Subthemes

  • Sutured healthcare network: where to refer patients? (lack of general practitioners, psychologists and psychiatrists in the network)

  • Workload, understaffing and lack of time (feeling constantly overwhelmed: accumulation of various tasks, administrative burden)

  • Communication barriers: taking language and culture into account in care (work with interpreters and transcultural aspects)

  • Series of crises: the sword of Damocles hanging over the future (immersion in the world’s difficulties, feeling that there is no break in between, wondering what lies ahead)

Theme 3: Resources and needs

 Subthemes

  • Personal resources and institutional support to cope with difficulties (clear boundaries, loved ones, sports, hobbies and colleagues)

  • Intrinsic motivation: meaning and benefits of this work (working with populations in great need, feeling useful, diversity)

  • Needs and suggestions: what could be improved (increase exchanges between colleagues, more training, promote collaboration with the network)