Accepted for/Published in: JMIR Research Protocols
Date Submitted: May 29, 2024
Open Peer Review Period: May 30, 2024 - Jul 25, 2024
Date Accepted: Nov 22, 2024
(closed for review but you can still tweet)
Warning: This is an author submission that is not peer-reviewed or edited. Preprints - unless they show as "accepted" - should not be relied on to guide clinical practice or health-related behavior and should not be reported in news media as established information.
Migration of Health Workers and its Impacts on the Nigerian Healthcare Sector: a Scoping Review Protocol
ABSTRACT
Background:
Health worker migration from Nigeria poses significant challenges to the Nigerian healthcare sector and has far-reaching implications for healthcare systems globally. Understanding the factors driving migration, its effects on healthcare delivery, and potential policy interventions is critical for addressing this complex issue.
Objective:
This scoping review aims to comprehensively examine the factors encouraging the emigration of Nigerian health workers, map out the effects of health worker migration on the Nigerian health system, document the loss of investment in health training and education resulting from migration, identify relevant policy initiatives addressing migration, determine the effects of Nigerian health worker migration on destination countries, and identify the benefits and demerits to Nigeria of health worker migration.
Methods:
This study will follow the Joanna Briggs Institute (JBI) methodology. A search strategy will retrieve published studies from MEDLINE, CINAHL, EMBASE, Global Health, Academic Search Premiere, and Web of Science. Unpublished studies will be sourced from Dissertations and Theses. A comprehensive search will involve keyword scans and citation searches. Exclusion criteria will filter out irrelevant studies, such as studies unrelated to the international migration of health workers and non-English language studies. A total of 2 independent reviewers will screen the titles and abstracts and then review the full text. Data will be extracted from the included studies using a data extraction tool developed for this study.
Results:
A PRISMA-ScR flow diagram will detail the study selection process. Data extraction will utilize a draft charting table. Results will be presented logically and descriptively, providing insights into publication trends, study characteristics, outcomes, etc.
Conclusions:
This study holds immense potential to contribute to understanding health worker migration from Nigeria and inform policy and practice interventions to address its challenges. By synthesizing existing evidence, the scoping review will guide future research and policy efforts to mitigate the adverse effects of migration on healthcare systems and workforce sustainability.
Citation
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Copyright
© The authors. All rights reserved. This is a privileged document currently under peer-review/community review (or an accepted/rejected manuscript). Authors have provided JMIR Publications with an exclusive license to publish this preprint on it's website for review and ahead-of-print citation purposes only. While the final peer-reviewed paper may be licensed under a cc-by license on publication, at this stage authors and publisher expressively prohibit redistribution of this draft paper other than for review purposes.