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Perspectives on the injured child's hospital discharge process and opportunities for improvement: a scoping review
Emsea Akers1, Shanthi Ameratunga2,3, Laura Wilkinson-Meyers4
1Health Systems Department, School of Population Health, Faculty of Medical and Health Sciences, The University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand emsea.akers@auckland.ac.nz.
Insights
This review examines caregiver and provider views on hospital discharge for injured children. It identifies challenges and opportunities to improve care transitions and reduce health inequities.
Area of Science:
- Pediatrics
- Health Services Research
- Injury Prevention
Background:
- Unintentional injuries are a major cause of childhood hospitalization and disability globally.
- The hospital discharge process can present a secondary crisis for families, impacting recovery.
- Understanding caregiver and provider perspectives is crucial for improving post-discharge care.
Purpose of the Study:
- To summarize literature on hospital discharge for injured children from caregiver and service provider viewpoints.
- To identify challenges and opportunities for enhancing discharge planning.
- To investigate inequities in discharge processes using a healthcare access framework.
Main Methods:
- A scoping review of empirical literature published between 2000-2025.
- Searches conducted across CINAHL Plus, Cochrane Library, Embase, and Ovid MEDLINE.
- Data extraction guided by Levesque et al.'s Conceptual Framework of Access to healthcare.
Main Results:
- Identifies key perspectives of caregivers and service providers on current discharge practices.
- Highlights challenges and potential interventions to improve discharge planning.
- Examines the investigation of inequities within existing literature.
Conclusions:
- Findings will inform strategies to optimize the hospital discharge process for injured children.
- Addresses gaps in understanding and improving care transitions and equity.
- Provides a comprehensive overview of the discharge experience for injured pediatric patients.
Introduction:
Unintentional injury is a leading cause of hospitalisation and disability in children globally. Families may experience a second crisis of injury after the child's discharge from the hospital, with the traumatic nature of injuries affecting physical and psychosocial recovery. This scoping review aims to summarise the literature on the perspectives of injured children's caregivers and service providers on the hospital discharge process, the challenges and opportunities to improve discharge planning evident from qualitative and interventional studies, and the investigation of inequities in these studies using the Conceptual Framework of Access to healthcare proposed by Levesque et al in 2013.
Methods And Analysis:
A scoping review will be conducted involving a search across four databases: CINAHL Plus, Cochrane Library, Embase and Ovid MEDLINE. Empirical literature published in English between 2000 and 2025 will be eligible for inclusion. Included studies will report caregiver or service provider perspectives on current hospital discharge practice for injured children under 18 years old, investigated a priori as a study objective or a posteriori as a finding, or will report the design, implementation or evaluation of interventions intended to improve hospital discharge for injured children. Levesque et al's framework will be used to guide data extraction from the selected studies into predefined data charting forms, informing the review questions. Findings will be presented narratively and in tables to highlight the key characteristics of the studies, the perspectives of caregivers and service providers, the challenges and opportunities to improve hospital discharge, the proposed discharge interventions, the investigation of inequities and the gaps in the literature.
Ethics And Dissemination:
The scoping review only uses data in the public domain and does not require ethics approval.
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