End-of-life treatment decisions in adult Muslims: a scoping review protocol

The objective of this scoping review is to explore the empirical evidence on the range of treatment decisions made by adult Muslims at the end of life.

Relief of pain and suffering is a human right; however, ethnic, racial, and religious minorities do not receive optimum end-of-life care. Several factors have been identified as impacting on the decision-making of minority populations. These patients have been found to access palliative care to a lesser degree, receive inadequate pain management, prefer aggressive care, and die in a place other than their place of preference. Muslims remain an under-represented community in end-of-life studies, with little known about their care preferences and decisions in their final stage of life.

This review will include studies whose participants are adults (≥18 years) facing end-of-life decision-making who identify as Muslim while residing in a non-Muslim-majority country. The participants may be healthy volunteers with a view on the subject, or patients and their caregivers facing end-of-life decision-making. Quantitative and qualitative studies will be included, with the exclusion of theoretical and opinion-based articles.

The three-step search strategy for the proposed scoping review will follow JBI methodology. Databases to be searched include MEDLINE via OvidSP, PsycINFO via OvidSP, Embase via OvidSP, Scopus (Elsevier), CINAHL via EBSCO, and ProQuest Dissertations and Theses Global. Studies in English published since database inception will be considered. The results will be extracted and charted by two independent reviewers. Data will be presented in tabular form and a narrative summary provided.