Perspectives on the injured child's hospital discharge process and opportunities for improvement: a scoping review protocol.

Abstract

Unintentional injury is a leading cause of hospitalisation and disability in children globally. Families may experience a second crisis of injury after the child's discharge from the hospital, with the traumatic nature of injuries affecting physical and psychosocial recovery. This scoping review aims to summarise the literature on the perspectives of injured children's caregivers and service providers on the hospital discharge process, the challenges and opportunities to improve discharge planning evident from qualitative and interventional studies, and the investigation of inequities in these studies using the Conceptual Framework of Access to healthcare proposed by Levesque <i>et al</i> in 2013. A scoping review will be conducted involving a search across four databases: CINAHL Plus, Cochrane Library, Embase and Ovid MEDLINE. Empirical literature published in English between 2000 and 2025 will be eligible for inclusion. Included studies will report caregiver or service provider perspectives on current hospital discharge practice for injured children under 18 years old, investigated a priori as a study objective or a posteriori as a finding, or will report the design, implementation or evaluation of interventions intended to improve hospital discharge for injured children. Levesque <i>et al</i>'s framework will be used to guide data extraction from the selected studies into predefined data charting forms, informing the review questions. Findings will be presented narratively and in tables to highlight the key characteristics of the studies, the perspectives of caregivers and service providers, the challenges and opportunities to improve hospital discharge, the proposed discharge interventions, the investigation of inequities and the gaps in the literature. The scoping review only uses data in the public domain and does not require ethics approval.