Poppe, Christopher
Elger, Bernice S.
Wangmo, Tenzin
Trachsel, Manuel http://orcid.org/0000-0002-2697-3631
Funding for this research was provided by:
Schweizerischer Nationalfonds zur Förderung der Wissenschaftlichen Forschung (406740_139294)
Article History
Received: 19 February 2019
Accepted: 26 June 2020
First Online: 6 July 2020
Ethics approval and consent to participate
: As confirmed by the cantonal ethics commission of Zurich, Switzerland, in January 2015 in accordance with the Swiss Human Research Act (HRA [CitationRef removed]), Art. 51, ethical review by the cantonal ethics commission was not required because no health-related personal data from the assessed physicians has been gathered in the present study. Thus, written informed consent was not necessary. However, all participants consented verbally to participate. If this project had been subject to the Swiss HRA, it still would have been exempt from written consent according to the Swiss Human Research Ordinance (HRO [CitationRef removed]), Art. 9. The patient data within this article has been completely anonymized for further use in accordance with Art. 25 of the Swiss HRO. We assume that the participants in this study had informed consent of their patients for the publication of their case narratives, but even if they did not, anonymized personal data can be used in accordance with HRO, Art. 10. The English translation of the HRO can be accessed here (ExternalRef removed) and for the HRA here (ExternalRef removed).
: All participants consented verbally to publication of the interview data. Written informed consent was not deemed necessary for this study (see above).
: Manuel Trachsel is an Associate Editor of BMC Medical Ethics. The other authors have no conflict of interests to declare.