Factors associated with access to post-sepsis care: a scoping review protocol

The objective of this scoping review is to identify and describe factors that affect access to post-sepsis care. Considering the burden faced by sepsis survivors, it is important to understand the facilitators and barriers to accessing post-sepsis care to facilitate the design and implementation of patient-centred and equitable pathways to care.

This scoping review will include studies that consider individuals who have experienced sepsis and any factors that may affect access to care, including comorbidities, discharge setting and social determinants of health. A comprehensive search of MEDLINE, Embase, Emcare, HealthSTAR and Scopus will be conducted. The extracted data will be summarised and presented thematically.

Approval from a research ethics board is not required for this review as it is a synthesis of information from studies where the primary investigators have already received approval from their respective ethics boards. Once complete, the review will be submitted for publication in a peer-reviewed journal, and the findings will be shared to local and national forums.

This review has been uploaded and registered under Open Science Framework. https://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/JMFW2.