Safe injection practices among anesthesia providers: a scoping review protocol.

Objective: The objective of this review is to identify and map literature related to safe injection practices among anesthesia providers in developed nations. The mapped literature will be used to determine if there is sufficient literature available to pose specific questions that can be valuably addressed, through a future systematic review, to reduce the prevalence of unsafe injections.

Introduction: A safe injection is one that does not harm the recipient, does not expose the healthcare worker to avoidable risk, and does not result in waste that is a danger to the community. The literature is replete with examples of disease outbreaks connected to unsafe injections via the misuse of syringes, needles and medications. Many such outbreaks involve unsafe injections by anesthesia providers.

Inclusion criteria: This scoping review will consider any research article or policy document, including unpublished reports, that provides information related to safe injection practices by anesthesia providers in developed nations.

Methods: For studies published in English from 2000, the databases to be searched include Ovid MEDLINE, CINAHL and Google Scholar. The search for unpublished literature will include the websites of anesthesia organizations, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the National Institutes of Health. Results will be screened by two independent reviewers who will use a standardized tool to independently extract data from each included source. The results of the review will be presented as a map of the data extracted in a tabular form and in a narrative descriptive summary.