Strategies to increase accessibility for students with disabilities in health professional programs: a scoping review protocol.

Objective: The objective of this scoping review will be to identify strategies in the literature that may increase the accessibility of health professional programs for students with disabilities.

Introduction: The number of students with disabilities in health professional programs is increasing. However, since students with disabilities experience barriers to education, their retention rates are potentially lower, and their attrition rates are potentially higher compared with their non-disabled peers.

Inclusion criteria: Academic and gray literature that identifies strategies intended to increase accessibility to health professional programs for students with disabilities will be included. Only articles published from 2000 onward will be considered for inclusion.

Methods: This review will follow the JBI methodology for scoping reviews. Databases to be searched will include Embase (Ovid), MEDLINE (Ovid), PsycINFO (Ovid), CINAHL (EBSCOhost), ERIC (ProQuest), and Web of Science. Gray literature will be searched for using Google. Websites of known disability organizations will also be searched. There will be no language limitations. Paired reviewers will independently screen titles and abstracts, and then full-text articles. Data will be extracted using a tool developed by the reviewers. The extracted data will be synthesized and reported in tabular format, accompanied by a narrative summary connecting the results to the objective of the review.

This scoping review protocol was registered in open science framework: https://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/BSYRT.