Article History
Received: 12 May 2020
Accepted: 15 July 2020
First Online: 17 August 2020
Ethics approval and consent to participate
: The study was approved by the central ethical review board, Gothenburg, Sweden, approval no: 970–15. This is a study in which data were prospectively recorded by the health-care providers in the ambulance. All patients and/or relatives were asked whether their identity should remain confidential before being reported in the ambulance patient data records. The patients who asked for their data to remain confidential were not included in the retrospective analysis. However, informed consent was not obtained from the patients for our retrospective analysis of their data. This is generally not recommended by Ethical Review Boards in Sweden for the following reasons: 1) Individual patients could never be identified since their identification number was translated to a code (their integrity therefore remained intact); 2) some of the most serious patients could never be contacted retrospectively, as they had either died or were in very poor clinical condition (this would increase the risk of selection bias, thereby hampering the reliability of the data); and 3) approaching patients and/or relatives with these issues may create more anxiety than satisfaction and may therefore be regarded as unethical.
: Not applicable.
: The authors declare that they have no competing interests.