JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

Drug-resistant tuberculosis (DRTB) is an increasing threat to human health and economic security worldwide. Exacerbating the severity of DRTB is the low rate of service delivery, leading to increased community transmission of the disease, further amplified by stigma. Health workers are on the front line of service delivery; their efforts in all areas of disease control are suspected of having resulted in stigmatization, impacting patient-centred care. As a growing concern, attention to addressing the DRTB stigma confronting health workers is required. However, little is known about stigma among health workers delivering services to DRTB patients. This scoping review will provide an overview that could help inform appropriate responses toward stigma-reduction interventions for these health workers.

Objective:

This scoping review protocol articulates a methodology that will examine the aspects of DRTB-related stigma confronting health workers in high TB- and DRTB-burden countries. The scoping review will summarize 1) stigma barriers and facilitators contributing to stigmatization among health workers delivering services to DRTB patients, 2) identify the most common stigma barrier and facilitator, and 3) and summarize the stigma reduction intervention recommendations in the studies.

Methods:

Guided by Arksey and O’Malley’s framework and the recommendations of Levac et al., we will conduct a scoping review of relevant articles providing evidence of drug-resistant tuberculosis-related stigma among health workers from high tuberculosis and DRTB burden countries. We will search published articles written in English from 2010 and onwards in electronic databases using MESH and keywords. Our search will apply a three-step search strategy and utilize software tools to manage references and facilitate the entire scoping review process. The findings of our review will be presented following Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) for Scoping Reviews checklist. Our study is registered under OSF Registries osf.io/43 kp9, licensed by CC-BY Attribution-NonCommercial NoDerivatives 4.0 International.

Results:

This scoping review is part of a bigger project that critically investigates stigma among health workers delivering services to patients resistant to TB medications. This current study started in November 2021 and is expected to finish in 2023. The study has retrieved 593 abstracts out of 12,138 articles searched since February 2022 from the identified databases. This study is expected to finish in 2023. The findings of this study will be published in a peer-reviewed journal. Discussions

Conclusions:

NA Clinical Trial: osf.io/43 kp9, licensed by CC-BY Attribution-NonCommercial NoDerivatives 4.0 International.