Interventions to improve equity in emergency departments for Indigenous people: A scoping review

Disparities in health outcomes, including increased chronic disease prevalence and decreased life expectancy for Indigenous people, have been shown across settings affected by white settler colonialism including Canada, the United States, Australia, and New Zealand. Emergency departments (EDs) represent a unique setting in which urgent patient need and provider strain interact to amplify inequities within society. The aim of this scoping review was to map the ED-based interventions aimed at improving equity in care for Indigenous patients in EDs.

This scoping review was conducted using the procedures outlined by Arksey and O'Malley and guidance on conducting scoping reviews from the Joanna Briggs Institute. A systematic search of MEDLINE, CINAHL, SCOPUS, and EMBASE was conducted.

A total of 3636 articles were screened by title and abstract, of which 32 were screened in full-text review and nine articles describing seven interventions were included in this review. Three intervention approaches were identified: the introduction of novel clinical roles, implementation of chronic disease screening programs in EDs, and systems/organizational-level interventions.

Relatively few interventions for improving equity in care were identified. We found that a minority of interventions are aimed at creating organizational-level change and suggest that future interventions could benefit from targeting system-level changes as opposed to or in addition to incorporating new roles in EDs.