Indigenous Peoples' Experiences in Palliative and End-of-Life Care in Canada: A Scoping Review

This scoping review aimed to explore what is known about Indigenous peoples' experiences with palliative and end-of-life care in Canada.

A scoping review.

A systematic search was performed from database inception to May 2022: CINAHL, Academic Search Complete, ERIC, Cochrane, Medline, PsychINFO, Indigenous Collections, Indigenous Peoples of North America and EMBASE. No date limitations were applied. Unpublished and grey literature was searched using the Google search engine. A search update was conducted in April 2024.

This scoping review was conducted in accordance with the Joanna Briggs Institute methodology for scoping reviews. Titles, abstracts and full text were screened for inclusion by two reviewers. Mapping and thematic analysis were used to analyse, collate and summarise extracted data.

Fifty-three sources were included in the review. While the methods, locations and context vary across the literature, common themes emerged: Disparities in Indigenous representation in palliative and end-of-life care literature, challenges in accessing palliative and end-of-life care, priorities related to palliative and end-of-life care and experiences specific to end of life.

This scoping review revealed several key insights into Indigenous peoples' experiences with palliative and end-of-life care.

Findings identify the need to enhance cultural safety in palliative and end-of-life care and support community capacity to develop and lead palliative and end-of-life care research and initiatives. Furthermore, findings suggest the need for palliative and end-of-life care initiatives that are Indigenous-led, grounded in Indigenous research methods and distinctions-based.

We have adhered to relevant EQUATOR guidelines. We followed the PRISMA-Scr in the reporting of this scoping review.

No patient or public contribution. This study did not include patient or public involvement in its design, conduct or reporting.