Child life specialist practice and utilization across health care: a scoping review protocol

Abstract

Objective: The objective of this review is to map the available evidence regarding the scope of child life specialist practice and utilization. Introduction: Child life specialists provide developmentally appropriate and emotion-focused supportive interventions that aim to build coping skills, enhance resilience, and mitigate traumatic experiences during health care encounters. Evidence of the care provided by a child life specialist is spread throughout health care literature. It is an emerging field that is aligned with a heightened focus on mental health and emotional safety. Evidence for the efficacy of child life specialists continues to grow. Inclusion criteria: Mapping the current evidence will capture the breadth of services provided by child life specialists. This scoping review will consider all evidence that reports on services provided by child life specialists, including across all quantitative and qualitative study designs, systematic reviews, and scoping reviews. The review will also include child life specialist workforce studies, such as child life specialist utilization, geographic availability, multidisciplinary team integration, and clinician-focused research. Case studies or narrative experiences outside of a qualitative research methodology, descriptions of program implementation, educational surveys, and quality improvement projects will be excluded from the scoping review. Methods: JBI methodology for scoping reviews will guide the review process. Literature published from 1980 to the present will be included. Databases to be searched include PubMed, Scopus, PsycINFO, and CINAHL. The search for unpublished evidence will include Google Scholar and OpenGrey. Extracted data will be presented in tabular format with accompanying narrative summary.

Child life specialist services, practice, and utilization across health care: a scoping review

“…This review mapped the evidence across the world and across clinical contexts from health systems to more discrete domains, such as medical subspecialities. Each of the items in the data extraction tool was piloted in the protocol 30 and chosen because of the link to the barriers and facilitators for child life specialist services in the health care system. Increased research conducted and authored by CLS will improve the existing evidence base on the scope of child life specialist services, practices, and utilization and efficacy of CLS’ interventions.…”

“…The review was conducted in accordance with the JBI methodology for scoping reviews, and conducted using the JBI System for the Unified Management, Assessment and Review of Information (JBI SUMARI; JBI, Adelaide, Australia) 29 . This review followed a published a priori protocol, 30 and was prepared in accordance with the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses extension for Scoping Reviews (PRISMA-ScR) 31 …”

“…Using a data extraction tool developed and piloted by the authors (Appendix III), data were extracted by a single reviewer from the research reports included in the scoping review 30 . As described in the scoping review protocol, the data extraction pilot pulled data relevant to factors interpreted as potential facilitators or barriers by the review authors 30 .…”

“…Using a data extraction tool developed and piloted by the authors (Appendix III), data were extracted by a single reviewer from the research reports included in the scoping review 30 . As described in the scoping review protocol, the data extraction pilot pulled data relevant to factors interpreted as potential facilitators or barriers by the review authors 30 . The data extracted included year of publication or presentation/availability if unpublished, context (clinical setting) of the study, clinical domain (medical or nursing specialty), geographic setting (country), disciplines involved in the study, authors of the report, role of CLS in the study, and child life interventions.…”