Article History
Received: 24 July 2018
Accepted: 22 May 2019
First Online: 27 May 2019
Ethics approval and consent to participate
: The study was reviewed and approved by the Ethics Committee of Zorgnet-Icuro – Care Network Flanders, an umbrella organization uniting over 775 social profit healthcare organizations in Flanders, Belgium [no reference number available]. At the time of the study, the committee was involved in developing a large-scale ethical guideline for values-based health care management. A qualitative study on values-based leadership in health care was necessary to acquire sufficient empirical data regarding values-based health care management and organizational ethics. The aim of this study was to gather in-depth insight into real-life management issues in this regard. Consequently, the results of the study could be incorporated into the large-scale project of developing the ethical guideline. All the members of the Ethics Committee unanimously reviewed and approved the study.All the participants in the interview study received written (by e-mail) and verbal information about the research project and expected outcome. Each participant provided verbal consent prior to the interview (approved by the Ethics Committee). Since we explicitly and purposefully included people with a well-known reputation (as appointed by their peers) of practising values-based health care management, the participants immediately understood the full aim of our study. As such, prior written and verbal information, was deemed sufficient for informed consent. The verbal information and consent was documented in the <i>verbatim</i> transcripts. Participation was voluntary. Participants were free to withdraw from the study at any stage. All data were treated confidentially.
: Not applicable.
: The corresponding author (YD) is Section Editor for BMC Medical Ethics.