Disaster management in rural and remote primary healthcare settings: a scoping review protocol

This scoping review aims to systematically identify and map the roles of primary healthcare professionals in rural and remote areas during natural, man-made and pandemic disasters.

Disasters can be caused by natural events, man-made incidents or infective agents resulting in a pandemic. Healthcare practitioners working in primary care settings have important roles during disaster prevention, preparedness, response and recovery. When rural and remote settings are affected by disasters, there are unique challenges for healthcare professionals. This review will aim to contribute to disaster management knowledge within rural and remote primary health care, and assist in the development of practice-based disaster preparedness and future policy discussion.

This review will consider studies that include primary healthcare professionals, defined as having first-level contact with patients in the community, in rural or remote areas only. The role of the healthcare professional will also be discussed within the paper. Research from Australia, Canada, the USA, New Zealand and the UK will be included.

Databases to be searched include CINAHL (EBSCOhost), PubMed, Scopus and Embase (Elsevier), as well as gray literature within Trove, MedNar and OpenGrey. The search will be limited to articles written in English and published from 1978 to the present. Titles and abstracts will be screened by two independent reviewers, and full-text studies will be retrieved and assessed against the inclusion criteria. Results will be recorded in a Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) diagram. Data will be extracted and presented as a tabular summary with supporting narratives and figures.