JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

Despite being one of the most common gynaecological procedures in the world, abortion care remains highly stigmatized. Internationally, providers have noted negative impacts related to their involvement in the services and abortion care has been described as “dirty work”. Though much of the existing research focuses on the challenges of providing, many have also highlighted the positive aspects of working in abortion care. Despite the steadily increasing interest in this area over the past decade, however, no one has sought to systematically review the literature to date. The aim of this review is to systematically explore published studies on the experiences of abortion care providers and to create a narrative review on the lived experience of providing abortion care.

Methods:

The review will be conducted according to the framework outlined by Levac et al., which expanded on the popular Arksey and O’Malley framework. We will systematically search for peer-reviewed articles in literature in six electronic databases: CINAHL, the Cochrane Library, EMBASE, PsycInfo, PubMed, and Web of Science. Following a pilot exercise, we have devised a search strategy to identify relevant studies. In this protocol, we outline how citations will be assessed for eligibility and what information will be extracted from the included articles. We also highlight how this information will be combined in the review. Discussion: The findings of this review will provide a comprehensive overview on the known experiences of providing abortion care. We also pre-empt that the findings will identify aspects of care and/or experiences that are not reflected in the available literature. We will disseminate the results via a publication in a peer-reviewed, academic journal and by presenting the findings at conferences in the areas of abortion care, obstetrics, and midwifery. As this review is a secondary analysis of published articles, ethical approval was not required.