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She is a PhD student on medical ethical dilemmas in DOC patients and the role of the family, especially in the decision making process. As a medical ethicist she also chairs MD's.The second author Jan Lavrijsen did his thesis on the prevalence and characteristics of patients in a vegetative state in Dutch nursing homes. He founded a research group Niemand tussen wal en schip\u2019 on the medical and ethical problems of patients with severe acquired brain injury and disorders of consciousness.The third author, Evert van Leeuwen is a professor in ethics and philosophy.The fourth author\u00a0Raymond Koopmans\u00a0is a professor in Elderly Care Medicine, especially long-term care.","order":1,"name":"Ethics","group":{"name":"EthicsHeading","label":"Authors\u2019 information"}},{"value":"Statement on ethics approval:The study was judged by the accredited regional medical research ethics committee WMO regio Arnhem-Nijmegen no 2015\u20131636. According to the Dutch Medical Research Involving Human Subjects Act (1998), the study did not meet criteria for medical scientific interventional research. Therefore no additional ethical evaluation was needed.Statement on ethics approval and consent:The committee also stated that since maximal anonymity was secured, consent of the family or the participants of the MD was not required. A consulted independent ethicist confirmed that no formal consent of the families was needed since the families did not participate in the study and anonymity was optimalized. Anonymity was secured by anonymisation of several aspects like the patient\u2019s names, time after incident, age, family relationships and other potentially identifying information, as suggested by Saunders et al. [].","order":2,"name":"Ethics","group":{"name":"EthicsHeading","label":"Ethics approval and consent to participate"}},{"value":"The committee also stated that since maximal anonymity was secured, consent of the family or the participants of the MD was not required. An independent ethicist confirmed that no formal consent of the families was needed since the families did not participate in the study and anonymity was optimalized. Anonymity was secured by anonymisation of several aspects like the patient\u2019s names, time after incident, age, family relationships and other potentially identifying information, as suggested by Saunders et al. [].","order":3,"name":"Ethics","group":{"name":"EthicsHeading","label":"Consent for publication"}},{"value":"The authors declare that they have no competing interests.","order":4,"name":"Ethics","group":{"name":"EthicsHeading","label":"Competing interests"}},{"value":"Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.","order":5,"name":"Ethics","group":{"name":"EthicsHeading","label":"Publisher\u2019s Note"}}],"article-number":"10"}}