Scoping review: Understanding patients’ and healthcare providers’ perceptions of healthcare acceptability of HIV, TB and maternal healthcare services

Abstract

Healthcare acceptability is critical in global debates for improving service delivery across all health specialities. The concept of healthcare acceptability reflects interactions between patients and healthcare providers and is expressed through attitudes, beliefs, perceptions, experiences and expectations. These terms are often used to describe human behaviour in psychology science. The concept of healthcare acceptability is widely used in healthcare, particularly in psychology literature, and is still ill-defined and poorly conceptualized. This scoping review will explore and describe the depth and breadth of evidence on healthcare acceptability definitions, conceptual frameworks and applications through the lens of patients and healthcare providers in HIV, TB and maternal healthcare services. We will search electronic databases and grey literature, guided by a search strategy in accordance with eligibility criteria. Two researchers will independently screen and chart data from retrieved and included articles. An agreement of 80% between reviewers’ results will be considered appropriate and a third reviewer will resolve any conflict between them. The results will be presented in graphical, charted or tabular form accompanied by a summary linking the results to the objectives. The researchers will discuss and disseminate important findings, limitations and propose potential implications and future research projects.