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. 2021 Nov 25;21(4):23. doi: 10.5334/ijic.6004

Table 1.

Scoping Review Methods.


SCOPING REVIEW STAGE METHODS

(1) Defined the research questions and purpose
  • The following research question was developed: What is known from the existing literature about workforce development in integrated care?

    • The scoping review focused on two concepts: (1) integrated care and (2) workforce development

    • Target audience for review: healthcare workers

    • Intended outcomes:

    • a thematic framework that represents the key concepts and contexts for education and training

    • a list of the key future research priorities.


(2) Identified relevant studies
  • Search strategy:

    • Initial limited searches were conducted in PubMed to identify relevant keywords and MeSH terms.

    • This list of terms and MeSH synonyms was developed with reference to the two concepts and applied to CINAHL and Medline databases to test for relevance.

    • Abstracts of potentially useful studies were read to identify any other relevant search terms.

    • The search also included input from a senior health science librarian.

    • A similar search strategy was used for all databases.

  • Databases searched:

    • Medline, CINAHL, EMBASE, ERIC (education, policy and theory), Cochrane, Web of Science and Scopus

  • Initial eligibility criteria:

    • Articles written in English

    • Articles published between 2013 and 2020

  • Refined inclusion and exclusion criteria:

    • Articles were included if they described an educational model or framework and key elements or competencies in health workforce training, education and integrated care.

    • Articles were excluded if they had a single disease focus, were conference abstracts, there was no full text available or were not in English.


(3) Selected studies
  • Article titles and abstracts were screened to ensure that they explicitly discussed health workforce training, education and integrated care.

  • Full articles were then screened and pilot tested, and inclusion criteria refined until they were considered fit for purpose.

  • Three authors developed and piloted a standardised full text table to calibrate and test the full text data extraction. One author extracted the data using the table, with two additional authors checking for completeness and independently screening at least 20% of full text articles [17].


(4) Charted the data
  • Extracted material included authors, year, title, country, journal, type of study (i.e., empirical/non-empirical) target workforce, skills and competencies, programme models, use of participants in the programme design, study recommendations and a summary of a perfect workforce.


(5) Collated, summarised and reported the results

Notes: MeSH = Medical subject heading.