2.8. Ethical Issues
BLIND
The project received ethical clearance from the Ethics Committees for Health of the hospitals where the research was conducted, which is in line with the principles of the Helsinki Declaration and later amendments [All subjects provided informed consent prior to any evaluation during the enrolment phase. All participants were provided with written and verbal information about the study. Patients were informed that they had the option to withdraw from the study at any time without penalty or censure. All data collecting and management procedures took the participants’ privacy and confidentiality into account. The main researcher (AQ) was not blind for both the intervention and the control group. To ensure equity to access the Hope Intervention Program, the control group participants were offered the opportunity to enrol in the hope activities of the program after the study completion.