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Article History

Received: 28 February 2022

Accepted: 20 July 2022

First Online: 28 July 2022

Declarations

:

: The need for ethics approval was deemed unnecessary according to national regulations, namely the Greek Constitution (Article 16) and Law 3653/2008 on Research and Technology (Article 1). In Greece, there is no legal requirement for ethical approval as regards qualitative research and there are no institutional review mechanisms in place for qualitative research where no sensitive issues are explored. The National Bioethics Commission has only an advisory role and does not provide ethical approvals for potential research []. During the recruitment an informed consent letter was sent, which introduced the first author as a student completing his studies and explained the objective of the research, that participation was voluntary and that participants could interrupt or quit the study at any time. Participants provided their oral consent before the FGDs started. This consent form was not approved by any ethics committee or institutional review board because, as stated above, in compliance with Greek regulations, it was not necessary to submit the present study for ethics approval. Participants did not receive any compensation. To protect participants’ confidentiality, their names were replaced with codes, only the first author had access to these data, and all personal identifiers were removed so that the persons described were not identifiable. The transcripts were stored in a trusted repository at the last author’s university. The study was conducted in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki [].

: Not applicable.

: The authors declare that they have no competing interests.