Haemorrhage control in the prehospital setting: a scoping review protocol

Prehospital haemorrhage control has saved thousands of lives in the military over the last decade. While uncontrolled haemorrhage is a leading cause of preventable injury death in the USA for individuals under 45, military prehospital haemorrhage control techniques have not fully translated to the civilian sector in the USA. The effective implementation of haemorrhage control for civilian prehospital trauma is dependent on a more complex array of system and personnel-level factors than the military.

This protocol describes the methodology of a scoping review on haemorrhage control strategies in the prehospital setting; specifically, education, logistics and implementation of these strategies. The aim of the review is to identify research gaps and create recommendations for future research surrounding prehospital layperson haemorrhage control.

The protocol uses the framework published by The Joanna Briggs Institute and Arksey and O'Malley, while following the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis Extension for Scoping Review Protocols guidelines. The search strategy was refined with the help of a medical librarian. Three peer-reviewed databases (EMBASE, PubMed and Web of Science), databases dedicated to grey literature sources, and reference mining will be used. Two investigators will independently screen and extract data. Discrepancies will be resolved by a third investigator. The extracted data will undergo descriptive analysis of the contextual data and a quantitative analysis using the appropriate statistical methods. In addition, this search strategy will be supplemented by a grey literature search.

Research ethics approval is not required for this scoping review. This scoping review will serve to highlight existing gaps within the literature to guide further research and develop future strategies to improve prehospital haemorrhage management. The results of this review will be presented at relevant national and international conferences and published in a peer-reviewed journal.