Christidis, Nikolaos
Lindberg, Viveca
Jounger, Sofia Louca
Christidis, Maria
Funding for this research was provided by:
Karolinska Institute
Article History
Received: 11 March 2022
Accepted: 2 September 2022
First Online: 14 September 2022
Declarations
:
: Based on the Swedish law, SFS 2003:460 [CitationRef removed], this does not warrant any ethical application/approval. The law states that ethical approval by the Swedish Ethical Review Authority is required only for projects involving physical interventions, biological sampling, or projects that might affect the participants in any possible physical or psychological way, or if the project treat sensitive personal data or personal data about law violations. After consulting the Swedish Ethical Review Authority, no such material was handled in this project. Based on the study set-up, there was no risk for the participants to suffer any physical or mental harm, nor was any sensitive or personal information collected. All participants volunteered by contacting the principal investigator (NCh) themselves showing their interest in participation and giving their verbal consent in a first step, prior to inclusion. They were then instructed by the principal investigator to secure anonymity within the protocols by removing any kind of identification, and to only over hand their protocols to an external researcher (MCh) for anonymity reasons. Further, all participants gave their verbal consent to the external researcher (MCh) before handing over their written protocols. Verbal consent was recommended by the Swedish Ethical Review Authority in order to keep anonymity secured, because obtaining written consent would risk providing information of the participating students: Thus, written consent would have jeopardized anonymity. After receiving the protocols, the external researcher MCh, scanned them pairwise and named them Protocol 1 to 12. This procedure was to further ensure that no personal information could be disclosed in any step, since only the credentials of MCh could be traced digitally. Thus, no personal information of the participants could be revealed in any step of the analysis. Further, the material was analyzed after the students ‘graduation from the SPD. This, to ensure that participation in the study could not affect the students’ marks during the rest of the education [CitationRef removed].
: Not applicable.
: The authors have collected and analyzed the material alone and declare that they have no competing interests.