School health professionals' understanding of culture: a scoping review protocol

Culture is highlighted in previous research as important in encounters where health professionals and children do not share a language or culture. In these encounters, culture is described as mainly related to the child, whereas the health professionals' understanding of their own culture as impacting the encounter tends to be left out. To clarify how culture is understood and conceptualised among professionals, it is of relevance to collate previous research on health professionals' understanding of culture. In the scoping review that this protocol describes, we aim to focus on the context of the school health services, being a context accessible to many children in their everyday life. The aim of the review will be to identify, describe and analyse previous research concerning school health professionals' (ie, school nurses, school social workers, school doctors and school psychologists) understanding of culture.

This scoping review will be guided by the methodology described by Peters et al and Khalil et al. Searches will be conducted in Scopus, PubMed, Cinahl Plus, SocIndex, Sociological Abstracts, Social Services Abstracts, APA PsycInfo, APA PsycArticles, Web of Science and Applied Social Sciences Index & Abstracts (ASSIA). Any published scientific papers focusing on school health professionals' understanding of culture (conceptualised through a variety of related terms) and school health services conducted within the last 10 years (2013-2023) will be included. Two reviewers will independently screen all titles and abstracts for inclusion. Two reviewers will conduct the screening of full-text documents and the extraction of information. Qualitative content analysis as well as discourse analysis will be employed.

Ethical approval is not required for this study. The findings will be disseminated through peer review publication as well as presentation at conferences and to relevant stakeholders.