McInnerney, Daisy
Candy, Bridget
Stone, Patrick
Atkin, Nicola
Johnson, Joana
Hiskey, Syd
Kupeli, Nuriye
Article History
Received: 7 December 2020
Accepted: 25 January 2021
First Online: 10 February 2021
Ethics approval and consent to participate
: The project was reviewed and given favourable opinion by the UCL Research Ethics Committee on 24th September 2019 (ref: 15281/001) and the NHS Health Research Authority (HRA) on 28th August 2019 (ref: 265276). HRA approval was required to approach a subset of 13 NHS managed hospice sites. Two hospices were not approached as they requested further information but were not able to issue trust approval before the questionnaire closing date. The study was carried out in accordance with the approved protocol and following the relevant guidelines, regulations and recommendations made by the research ethics committee and HRA. Participation was voluntary. All participants were provided with an online participant information sheet prior to taking part in the study, and had the opportunity to contact the research team to ask any questions. The written, online, informed consent form was included at the start of the questionnaire (see Additional file InternalRef removed). Participants could not progress to the questionnaire without signing the online informed consent form.
: The consent form was included at the start of the questionnaire and included a mandatory statement of consent for the information provided to be anonymously quoted in research outputs. Participants could not progress to the questionnaire without providing consent.
: NK and BC are associate editors for BMC Palliative Care but they had no involvement in the editorial handling of this paper. DM, PS, SH, NA and JJ declare to have no competing interest.