Barriers and facilitators experienced by patients, carers and healthcare professionals when managing symptoms in infants, children and young people at end-of-life: a mixed methods systematic review protocol

Abstract

Introduction: This protocol describes the objective and methods of a systematic review of barriers and facilitators experienced by patients, carers and healthcare professionals when managing symptoms in infants, children and young people (ICYP) at end-of-life.

Methods and analysis: The Cochrane Library, PROSPERO, CINAHL, MEDLINE, PsycINFO, Web of Science Core Collection, ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Database, Evidence Search and OpenGrey will be electronically searched. Reference screening of relevant articles and inquiries to researchers in the field will be undertaken. Studies will be selected if they apply qualitative, quantitative or mixed-methods designs to explore barriers and facilitators experienced by patients, carers and healthcare professionals when managing symptoms in ICYP at end-of-life.

Articles will be screened by title and abstract by one reviewer with a second reviewer assessing 10% of the articles. Both reviewers will read and screen all remaining potentially relevant articles. For included articles, one reviewer will extract study characteristics and one will check this.

Both reviewers will undertake independent quality assessments of included studies using established and appropriate checklists including The Critical Appraisal Skills Programme Qualitative Checklist; The evaluative criteria of credibility, transferability, dependability and confirmability; The Quality Assessment Tool for Quantitative Studies, and The Mixed Methods Appraisal Tool. Data synthesis methods will be decided after data extraction and assessment.

Ethics and dissemination: This review will inform our understanding of symptom management in ICYP at end-of-life. The findings will be reported in a peer-reviewed journal and presented at conferences. The study raises no ethical issues.

PROSPERO registration number: CRD42019124797