Reiner, Iris
Beutel, Manfred E.
Winter, Philipp
Rommens, Pol M.
Kuhn, Sebastian
Article History
Received: 14 October 2019
Accepted: 2 January 2021
First Online: 28 January 2021
Ethics approval and consent to participate
: All procedures performed in our study were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards.Information about background, content and aims of the exploratory study was given to eligible and available patients in understandable language by a specifically trained medical PhD student. Participation was voluntary. Oral consent to link the interview with the somatic data from the German polytrauma protocol was obtained for each individual case by the interviewer. In advance, our project was screened for possible ethics issues in accordance with Dixon (2017).Patient data was treated in line with General Data Protection Regulation. Regarding the data and analyses of the exploratory study, all identifying data were removed. Findings of the exploratory study were presented and discussed during the quality circle of the regional Trauma Network on August 21st 2018. As a result and a quality improvement of trauma care, routine screening for levels of distress in order to offer psychosomatic counseling if required was initiated at other centers as standard of care. The present exploratory study posed a low risk to the participants. An additional ethical approval was not required as procedures including medical treatments, invasive diagnostics or procedures causing psychological, spiritual or social harm or discomfort for the participants were not involved. If patients reported high levels of distress or posttraumatic stress symptoms, psychosomatic counseling was offered.
: Not applicable.
: The authors declare that they have no competing interests.