Wound management provided by advanced practice nurses: a scoping review protocol

Objective: The objective of this review is to examine the current state of the literature regarding wound care provided by advanced practice nurses globally. Specifically, this review will examine the similarities and differences in the wound care practice of advanced practice nurses, including nurse practitioners, clinical nurse specialists, and advanced practice registered nurses. Introduction: Advanced practice nurses have graduate education and advanced scope of practice. The addition of advanced wound care training provides unique opportunities for advanced practice nurses to provide wound care. Inclusion criteria: This review will consider advanced practice nurses who are nurse practitioners or registered nurses with graduate education and advanced training (certification/education) in wound care. The wound care can be provided independently or as a part of a team, in any setting. Methods: The proposed review will be conducted in accordance with the JBI methodology for scoping reviews. The databases searched will include MEDLINE, CINAHL, ProQuest Nursing and Allied Health, Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, and Scopus. To reflect changes in advanced practice nursing scope of practice, searches will be limited to articles published from 2011. Articles in languages other than English will be translated. Titles and abstracts will be independently reviewed by two reviewers, and relevant sources will be retrieved in full and reviewed. Any disagreements will be resolved through discussion or with an additional reviewer. The similarities and differences in wound care practice (type of wound, practice setting, treatments) will be extracted using a data extraction tool. Any modifications will be detailed in the scoping review. Extracted data will be presented in a descriptive format.