Document is current

Article History

Received: 9 March 2021

Accepted: 12 April 2021

First Online: 23 April 2021

Declarations

:

: The study has been approved by the Ethics Committee of the Medical Faculty of the University of Cologne (20-1349) for all three included hospitals and is registered at the German clinical trials register (DRKS00023343, Pre-Results). Relevant national and international data protection regulations are respected for all collected and analyzed data. Before inclusion, all participants receive written information about the aims and procedures of the study. The participants in the participant observations, focus groups and interviews are asked for written consent to collect, save and analyze their data. Personal identifiers are only recorded to manage data collection and are pseudonymized. The observations, focus groups and interviews are conducted by trained researchers to minimize the psychological burden on the healthcare professionals. The anonymization of patient records is completed by the respective hospital, so only anonymized documents are accessed. Questionnaires with healthcare professionals and patients are performed anonymously. With the written study information, participants are informed of their consent for participation, analysis of data and publication, by filling out the questionnaire. However, in order to preserve the possibility to link data from the pre-EPR with the post-EPR questionnaire, participants create an individual code that does not provide any indications of their identity and that could only be decoded by themselves. Time measurement, secondary data and data on level of digitalization are only collected at the hospital or ward level; thus, backtracking on individual level is not possible.

: Not applicable. The manuscript does not contain any individual person’s data in any form.

: Prof. Dr. Holger Pfaff is an Editorial Board Member in BMC Health Services Research. Furthermore, the authors declare no conflicts of interest.