Communication of poor prognosis between secondary and primary care: protocol for a systematic review with narrative synthesis

Lucy V Pocock, Sarah Purdy, Stephen Barclay, Fliss E M Murtagh, Lucy E Selman
2021 BMJ Open  
IntroductionPeople dying in Britain spend, on average, 3 weeks of their last year of life in hospital. Hospital discharge presents an opportunity for secondary care clinicians to communicate to general practitioners (GPs) which patients may have a poor prognosis. This would allow GPs to prioritise these patients for Advance Care Planning.The objective of this study is to produce a critical overview of research on the communication of poor prognosis between secondary and primary care through a
more » ... stematic review and narrative synthesis.Methods and analysisWe will search Medline, EMBASE, CINAHL and the Social Sciences Citation Index for all study types, published since 1 January 2000, and conduct reference-mining of systematic reviews and publications. Study quality will be assessed using the Mixed-Methods Appraisal Tool; a narrative synthesis will be undertaken to integrate and summarise findings.Ethics and disseminationApproval by research ethics committee is not required since the review only includes published and publicly accessible data. Review findings will inform a qualitative study of the sharing of poor prognosis at hospital discharge. We will publish our findings in a peer-reviewed journal as per Preferred Reporting for Systematic review and Meta-analysis (PRISMA) 2020 guidance.PROSPERO registrationCRD42021236087
doi:10.1136/bmjopen-2021-055731 pmid:34949630 pmcid:PMC9066345 fatcat:s2bygkzp2fbija7qhb4wdke7tu