Patient safety culture in home healthcare centres: protocol for a scoping review

Patient safety culture is a critical factor in improving the quality of home healthcare and preventing adverse events in patients receiving care in home health centres. However, the concept of patient safety culture in home healthcare centres is not clearly defined, and its dimensions and characteristics are still largely unknown. The aim of this scoping review is to provide a comprehensive overview of research on patient safety culture in home healthcare centres, identify related definitions and characteristics, and focus on key factors to fill the existing knowledge gaps.

This review will follow Arksey and O'Malley's methodological framework, updated by the Joanna Briggs Institute (JBI), which comprises five stages: identifying the research question, identifying relevant studies, selecting the studies, charting the data, and collating, summarising and reporting the results. The inclusion criteria will be based on the Population, Concept and Context framework. A comprehensive search of PubMed, Embase, Scopus, ProQuest, Web of Science, Cochrane and grey literature sources, with no date restrictions, was conducted with the assistance of a qualified research librarian to include all relevant published study designs and ensure a thorough understanding of the topic. The search will be continuously updated until the study is completed. In addition, we will review the reference lists of the final included studies and their citations to find further relevant studies. Studies that are duplicates and those not written in Persian or English will be excluded. The selection of studies based on the eligibility criteria will carried out by two independent reviewers who will perform a title/abstract screening followed by a full-text screening. Data extraction will be conducted using a standardised form from the JBI. Descriptive and content analyses will be conducted to identify key concepts in the literature reviewed.

No ethical review is required for this study. Results will be submitted for publication in a peer-reviewed journal and presented at conferences.