Inclusion and exclusion criteria
| Inclusion criteria | Exclusion criteria | |
| Types of participants | Study participants are SPCPs in a patient care role. We define SPCPs as people working in, or for, a healthcare setting whose main focus is on delivering palliative care (as opposed to clinical contexts where palliative care forms part, but not the main focus, of the care provided). This may include (but is not limited to) nurses, doctors, occupational therapist, physiotherapists, dieticians, speech and language therapists, psychologists, other allied health professionals and chaplains. Studies with a mixed population where SPCP participants’ data are separately presented and can be extracted will be included. | Participants who undertake palliative care tasks as part of their role (eg, oncologists), but who do not specialise in providing palliative care and do not have palliative care as the main focus of their role. |
| Context | All geographical settings and all clinical settings where SPC is delivered will be included. | Studies conducted in settings in which SPC is not being delivered. |
| Issues | The range of ethical challenges that are reported as experienced by SPCPs during clinical delivery of palliative care. The definition of ‘ethical challenges’ will be intentionally kept broad to capture the maximum number of examples. It includes but is not limited to terms such as ethical issues, moral challenges, moral dilemmas, values, good/bad, right/wrong. Ethical challenges can be labelled as such either by authors or participants. | Studies that use survey tools with preselected ethical dilemmas that have not been inductively derived based on evidence from SPCPs, and studies that investigate a single aspect of palliative care only will be excluded. These study designs are excluded as they proceed from an a priori assumption that their selected issues are relevant. They, therefore, do not contribute to an inductive exploration of the breadth and type of ethical challenges facing practitioners. |
| Methodologies | Empirical studies examining, using inductive methods, the ethical challenges reported by SPCPs in their clinical practice. These may include qualitative studies, mixed methods studies (eg, surveys with free-text responses) or quantitative studies using questionnaires derived inductively through consultation with SPCPs. | Studies not reporting inductively derived empirical data. These may include studies using questionnaires which include ethical challenges selected a priori or single-issue studies focused on an ethical challenge selected a priori by the researchers. |
| Timeframe | Any time frame up until the search date will be included, contingent on the inception dates of the databases included in the search. | |
| Type of publications | Peer-reviewed journal publications of empirical research. Papers in any language will be included, with findings translated into English where necessary. | Where no full text is available through the university subscription, study authors will be contacted for full text. If there is no response within 2 weeks, the study will be excluded. The following will also be excluded:
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SPCP, specialist palliative care provider.