Face-to-face interventions to encourage enrolment in cardiac rehabilitation: a scoping review protocol

INTRODUCTION: Cardiac rehabilitation has become an integral part of secondary treatment of cardiovascular heart disease. Despite evidence demonstrating that cardiac rehabilitation improves prognoses, reduces disease progression and helps patients to find a new foothold in life, many patients do not enrol. Face-to-face interventions can encourage patients to enrol; however, it is unclear which strategies have been developed, how they are structured in a hospital context and whether they target the life-world of the patients. The objective of this scoping review is to map and evaluate the nature and characteristics of studies that have reported on face-to-face interventions to encourage patients to enrol in cardiac rehabilitation. METHODS AND ANALYSIS: This review will be guided by the Joanna Briggs Institute Methodology for Scoping Reviews. A search strategy developed in cooperation with a research secretary will be applied in six databases including studies published from 2000 in English, Danish, Norwegian, Swedish and German with no restriction on publication type or study design. Studies involving adult patients with ischaemic heart disease or heart failure will be included. Studies providing the intervention after enrolment in cardiac rehabilitation will be excluded. Study selection will be performed independently by two reviewers. Data will be extracted by two reviewers using predefined data charting forms. The presentation of data will be a narrative summary of the characteristics and key findings to facilitate the integration of diverse evidence, and as we deem appropriate will be supported by a diagrammatic or tabular presentation. ETHICS AND DISSEMINATION: This scoping review will use data from existing publications and does not require ethical approval. Results will be reported through publication in a scientific journal and presented on relevant conferences and disseminated as part of future workshops with professionals involved in communication with patients about enrolment in cardiac rehabilitation.