Clinical leadership education-A scoping review protocol

Leadership is a key skill for physicians, but studies show that many junior doctors feel unprepared for the role as a leader. In recent years, there has been increasing interest and research into the training and development of clinical leadership, revolving around leadership in situations with direct patient care and as opposed to the administrative leadership of a department. However, the lack of consensus on how best to teach leadership, how the education should be structured, as well as a standardized definition and measure for good leadership, complicates training, assessment, and comparison of approaches in both research and education.

The aim of this study is to map out the existing body of research on leadership education for physicians and medical students and identify any gaps in this literature.

The scoping review will follow the Arksey and O'Malley (Arksey and O'Malley, Int J Soc Res Methodol. 2005; 8(1):19-32) framework, Joanna Briggs Institute methodology (JBI Manual for Evidence Synthesis-JBI Global Wiki) and PRISMA_ScR (Tricco et al., Ann Intern Med. 2018; 169(7):467-473). A systematic search will be conducted across the following databases: PubMed, Cochrane, Embase, Ebsco, Medline, and Google scholar. Two independent reviewers will screen titles and abstracts, then review the full texts of articles. Data will be extracted and presented in line with the review questions.

The study will use a structured approach, as guided by Arksey and O'Malley and JBI methodology. Studies not written in English, Danish, German, Swedish, and Norwegian will be translated using available software. This review will not include a formal assessment of the study quality or meta-analysis, as it is a scoping review.