Participants will be contacted by The George Institute for Global Health (TGI) at about six months and one year after joining the study.

They will complete short questionnaires about their quality of life, mood, anxiety, stress and thinking, and will also take part in an interview about their experience in hospital and recovery from their infection. The interview will explore ongoing symptoms, daily activities, healthcare needs and the effects of the illness on their family or carers. Follow-up will be completed by phone or video call, and participants may skip questions or stop at any time.

It will take approximately 1 hour for discussion at the 6- and 12-month timepoints. The study will also use health records to examine hospital readmissions and survival for up to two years.

Taking part is unlikely to involve major risks.

Some questions or interview topics may bring back difficult memories or cause temporary distress, and participants can skip any question, take a break, or stop at any time. Completing the questionnaires and interview will also take some time.

Participants may not receive a direct personal benefit, but some may value the opportunity to share their experiences. The information collected may help researchers better understand recovery after a serious bloodstream infection and improve future care and support for patients and their families.

Your information will be collected by the research team at your participating hospital and by the central study team at The George Institute for Global Health (TGI).

Information from questionnaires and interviews will be stored in secure, access-controlled research databases. Interview recordings and transcripts will also be stored securely, with your name and other identifying details removed wherever possible and kept separately from your research information. Information transferred between study teams will use approved secure systems, and only authorised members of the research team will have access to it.

Because interview responses may include personal experiences or details that are not easily removed, interview recordings and transcripts cannot be considered fully de-identified. They will therefore be stored securely and separately from your other study information, with access limited to authorised researchers.

Interview data may be used for future research related to serious infection, sepsis and long-term recovery.

You can withdraw from the qualitiative interviews at any time without giving a reason, and this will not affect your healthcare or participation in the main SNAP Trial.

If you withdraw, no further information will be collected from you. Information already collected may still be kept and used to protect the integrity of the research, particularly if it has already been analysed or included in study results.

Where possible, you may ask for identifiable interview recordings or transcripts that have not yet been analysed to be removed. Information that has already been de-identified, combined with other participants’ information or included in reports may not be able to be withdrawn.