Interventions to improve patient experience in mammography: a scoping review protocol

The objective of this review is to map the global evidence on interventions aiming to enhance the patient experience during mammography examination.

Mammography is the examination of choice to detect breast cancer, which is the most common malignant condition among women globally. However, this examination can cause psychological distress, discomfort, and pain for patients. To limit these negative experiences, and to promote patient engagement in diagnostic and screening examinations, some interventions have been tested in clinical practice. Each intervention has key differing features that need to be explored in a scoping review. This mapping will help inform mammography professionals and researchers.

This review will consider studies that focus on women, men, transgender, nonbinary, or intersexual persons undergoing diagnostic or screening mammography. It will consider studies evaluating interventions and reporting data on the patient experience. These interventions may, for instance, be related to the information provided, breast compression, relaxation, medication, or physical environment. The review will also describe the outcomes related to patient experience (eg, anxiety, pain, discomfort).

The search strategy will aim to find published and unpublished studies and will be conducted in MEDLINE, Embase, CINAHL, PsycINFO, Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials, Web of Science, and ProQuest Dissertation and Theses. Furthermore, three registries will be searched for ongoing studies. This review will be conducted following JBI methodology, utilizing the three-step search strategy with two independent reviewers performing study selection and data extraction. The results, frequencies, and conceptual categories will be presented in a tabular and narrative summary.

Open Science Framework ( https://osf.io/fn865/ ).