Nurse-led music-based interventions across clinical care settings: a scoping review protocol

Music-based interventions are increasingly used as supportive, non-pharmacological approaches in clinical care, yet nursing roles are often described inconsistently and intervention terminology and reporting remain heterogeneous. This scoping review will map the available evidence on music-based interventions with an explicit nursing role, referred to collectively in this review as nurse-led music-based interventions, for patients or care recipients across clinical care settings, with attention to populations, nursing roles, intervention characteristics, reported outcomes and implementation issues.

The review will follow Joanna Briggs Institute (JBI) scoping review methodology and will be reported according to Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic reviews and Meta-Analyses extension for Scoping Reviews (PRISMA-ScR). Preliminary searches of MEDLINE, CINAHL, Embase, Scopus, Web of Science Core Collection, PsycINFO, CNKI, Wanfang Data and VIP Information were conducted on 4 May 2026 solely to validate the database-specific search strategies; the formal search has not commenced. Formal searches of these databases and planned grey literature sources will be conducted from 1 to 7 September 2026, with an update search in February 2027 and completion anticipated in March 2027. Eligible sources will report an explicit and identifiable nursing role in a music-based intervention. Primary roles will be classified using prespecified responsibility-based definitions as nurse-led, nurse-managed, nurse-coordinated, nurse-delivered, nurse-facilitated or multidisciplinary with an explicit nursing role; all reported nursing activities and multidisciplinary involvement will also be retained. Two reviewers will independently undertake each stage of study selection and data charting, with adjudication when consensus cannot be reached. Findings will be presented through descriptive summaries, evidence mapping, tabular displays and narrative synthesis.

Ethical approval is not required because this review will use published and publicly accessible sources. Findings will be disseminated through peer-reviewed publication and conference presentations.

The protocol was registered on the Open Science Framework on 11 April 2026 (https://osf.io/c6ytn).