Abstract
Objective: This protocol aims to guide the process to conduct scoping review on synthesizing the extent of the use, approaches, and evidence behind the implementation of integrated care approaches for people with chronic musculoskeletal disorders.
Introduction: Evidence shows that care for people with chronic musculoskeletal (MSK) disorders is fragmented and siloed among different services and providers. In Canada, services are rarely integrated presenting challenges for people with the condition to access timely and appropriate health and social care. Urgent improvements are needed within the health care delivery system to support people with the chronic MSK disorders to manage their condition, such as enhancing diagnosis, better information, reducing wait times to see specialists, improving referrals and ensuring access to services.
Integrated care is an emerging approach to delivering person-centred, high-quality care, and has been widely implemented to support people with various chronic health conditions. An integrated care approach requires transformation of health and social services to address the complexity of care and deliver people-centred care. However, the extent to which integrated care is utilized to support individuals with chronic MSK disorders remains limited.
Methods: This scoping review will include studies conducted on integrated care delivered for people with chronic MSK conditions across various health care settings (e.g., primary, secondary, tertiary) and/ or geographical location (countries). The review will adhere to the scoping review methodology suggested by the Joanna Briggs Institute. Relevant databases such as Ovid MEDLINE, CINAHL, EMBASE, and PsycINFO, will be thoroughly searched to identify articles relevant to the review objectives. Grey literature databases (e.g., Google Scholar) will also be explored for relevant studies. Only articles published in English language will be considered. Identified articles will be exported to Covidence software to remove duplicates and conduct the analysis. Two reviewers will independently review the selected articles and extract data using the data extraction tool developed for the purpose of this scoping review. The analysis will involve numerical and descriptive summaries of the selected articles and will be presented using graphs and tables in alignment with PRISMA Extension for Scoping Reviews.
Discussion and next steps: The literature search phase of the scoping review is progress. Our search strategies are expected to yield relevant studies to guide the next steps of the scoping review process. We intend to present details on the scoping review protocol for this project, including the keywords and search terms, databases searched, and the latest progresses on the review at the International Conference on Integrated Care conference (ICIC24) in Belfast, Northern Ireland. This work will be of relevance to conference attendees with interest in implementing and evaluating integrated care for people with chronic MSK disorders.
Patient and caregiver engagement: One of our research team members is a person with the lived experience of chronic pain and serves as a caregiver for an individual with the same condition. This team member has actively participated in designing the protocol (e.g., formulating the research questions) and will continue to contribute to data analysis, and writing, and disseminating the results.