Aleksejūnienė, Jolanta
Pūrienė, Alina
Rimkervicius, Arunas
Amariei, Corneliu
Oancea, Roxana
Porosencova, Tatiana http://orcid.org/0000-0001-5644-934X
Porosencov, Egor
Nikolovska, Julijana
Mirnaya, Elena
Serova-Papakul, Aleksandra
Eaton, Kenneth A.
Article History
Received: 21 December 2018
Accepted: 31 January 2020
First Online: 10 February 2020
Ethics approval and consent to participate
: The full names of the ethics committees concerned are given at the end of the first paragraph of the methods section and are repeated here. They were: the Committee of Bioethics of the Republic of Belarus, the Lithuanian Bioethics Ethics Committee, the Ethics Committee of the Macedonian Society of Dental Medicine, the Research Ethics Committee of the State University of Medicine and Pharmacy “Nicolae Testimatanu”, Republic of Moldova, and the Research Ethics committee of the Romanian Association of Orodental Public Health. Some did not give reference numbers but did date their letter of approval. The details are: Belarus -letter dated 26 January 2017, Lithuania- NR..S.(5.2) -213, Macedonia - 31 March 2016, Moldova – nr.16 25.01.2013, Romania - ref. CitationRef removed 12 March 2015.In Belarus, Lithuania, Moldova and Romania, the general dentists (GDs) were advised, in the email that accompanied the questionnaire, that if they agreed to complete the questionnaire their responses would be treated as confidential and their anonymity would be maintained. They were also advised that completion of the questionnaire would indicated that they had consented to take part in the survey. In Macedonia, where the questionnaires were given to GDs in person, they were given the reassurances of confidentiality and anonymity, should they complete the questionnaire, verbally together with the advice that completion of the questionnaire would be viewed as implying consent to take part in the survey.
: As mentioned above, all the authors have read and approved the final version of this manuscript. No clinical images or details of the GDs who participated are included in the manuscript and their anonymity has been preserved.
: The authors declare that they have no competing interests.