Consent for transfusion: global practices, documentation and patient understanding - a scoping review protocol

Patient involvement in healthcare has become increasingly important, not only as an expression of respect for autonomy but also as a means of empowering individuals to safeguard their care. In blood transfusion, informed consent is a critical tool for shared decision-making. This protocol outlines a scoping review to map how transfusion consent processes and forms are used globally and to characterise their key features. We aim to identify technologies used to obtain consent, evaluate compliance with international recommendations, describe practices in special populations and examine patients' and families' understanding of the consent process.

Following the Joanna Briggs Institute methodology, we will search PubMed, Embase, LILACS, Web of Science and Scopus; grey literature will be explored via Google Scholar and the Open Access Theses and Dissertations platform. No language or date restrictions will be applied. Reference lists of included studies will also be screened. Two reviewers will independently screen studies and chart data; disagreements will be resolved by a third reviewer. Synthesis will be diagrammatic/tabular with structured narrative, reported according to Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses: extension for Scoping Reviews. Where data allow, findings will be stratified by clinical setting. A stakeholder consultation with two transfusion medicine experts and two patient representatives will be undertaken to validate and refine interpretations.

Only publicly available sources will be used; research ethics approval is not required. Findings will be submitted to a peer-reviewed journal and presented at scientific meetings.

10.17605/OSF.IO/NU69J.