A scoping review protocol of evidence-based guidance and guidelines published by general practitioner professional organisations

Introduction: General practitioners (GPs) strive to use a patient centered approach to achieve shared decision making by integrating clinical evidence, clinical judgement, and patient priorities. In order to achieve this standard of care, GPs require relevant, up to date and high quality evidence. Currently there is a gap in the literature regarding the role of GP professional organisations internationally in producing and publishing evidence based guidance and clinical guidelines for GPs. This protocol outlines a scoping review to identify what evidence-based guidance is produced by general practitioner professional organisations internationally in terms of topic content, the structure and methods used to develop guidance and ways of disseminating this guidance, to support general practice clinical decision making. Methods: This scoping review will be conducted using the framework proposed by the Joanna Briggs Institute and the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-analysis extension for scoping reviews (PRISMA-ScR), will be used to guide the reporting. Two researchers will search electronic databases (Medline, Embase, Cochrane Library and Scopus), grey literature sources and contact international GP professional organisations directly to identify appropriate studies for inclusion. Key information will be categorised and classified to generate a summary of the methods used internationally to develop and implement evidence-based guides for general practitioners and a narrative synthesis will be conducted. Conclusions: This scoping review will examine current practice internationally regarding the role of General Practice professional organisations in producing and publishing clinical guidelines and evidence based guidance to support general practitioner’s clinical decision making to benefit patient care.