Horn, Carla
Bam, Nokwanda Edith
Matsipane, Molekodi Jacob
Funding for this research was provided by:
North-West University
Article History
Received: 27 December 2023
Accepted: 13 May 2024
First Online: 21 May 2024
Declarations
:
: The researcher strived to adhere to ethical principles of informed consent, confidentiality, justice of the study, beneficence, doing no harm, respect for participants, and privacy. The researcher was guided by the Declaration of Helsinki of the World Medical Association with regards to ethical principles []. Informed consent was obtained from every participant before the individual interviews were conducted. Participants were provided with an information leaflet and informed consent form containing information regarding the study as well as contact details of the researcher if they had any questions or enquiries. The participants were granted 24 h to familiarize themselves with the information before consent was obtained. Participants were informed that participation is voluntary and that they could withdraw at any given time. The researcher obtained legal authorization from the responsible authorities, and ethical clearance of the study was granted by the North-West University Research Ethics Committee (NWU-HREC) with ethics number 0000523A1. Before accessing the chosen hospital, the researcher sought and acquired official authorization from the Western Cape Department of Health with research reference number WC_202303_003. Subsequently, the Chief Executive Officer and the Unit Manager of the designated hospital approved permission for entry.
: Not applicable.
: The authors declare no competing interests.
: This was a qualitative study to explore the disaster preparedness of nurses in a specific obstetric unit of only one hospital. Even though the researcher obtained data saturation, the sample population was relatively small. Little to no information on disaster preparedness within obstetric units in South African government hospitals are available and thus the researcher had no guidance of prior research or literature as referencing framework.