Document is current

Article History

Received: 10 September 2020

Accepted: 29 October 2020

First Online: 10 November 2020

Ethics approval and consent to participate

: Students paramedics are not “vulnerable persons” according to the Swiss Federal Act on Research involving Human Beings [], and approval by an ethics committee is, therefore, not required in the setting of a web-based study which does not involve the collection of health-related data. We had nevertheless already submitted a clarification of responsibility to the “Commission cantonale d'éthique de la recherche” (CCER), i.e. the Geneva ethics committee, regarding our previous study, the design of which is almost identical []. This ethics committee had reviewed the synopsis of this protocol and issued a “Declaration of no objection” (Req-2020-00374). We also sought approval from paramedic instructors of all three schools, who reviewed the study protocol before providing us with the e-mail addresses of their students. The students were given extensive information in the invitation e-mail (though they were unaware that there were two different study paths). They were told that clicking on the survey link was considered as consent to participate in the study.

: Not applicable

: Most authors (except RL) participated in the creation of the e-learning module. Nevertheless, as this module is freely available online (in both web and SCORM versions), and as the authors have previously reported mostly negative results in a previous study designed to evaluate the impact of the same module [], they do not acknowledge any conflict of interest.