What is the role of advanced physiotherapy practice for adults in urgent care and emergency department settings? A scoping review protocol.

Introduction: The Advanced Practice Physiotherapy (APP)bmodel of care is implemented internationally, with notable variations in its application across different healthcare systems. Nonetheless, APP has been shown as a means of mitigating against emergency department (ED) crowding and reducing pressure on EDs. This protocol outlines the methods in conducting a scoping review to identify the extent of APP roles in urgent care and ED settings, their expertise levels, the profile of patients they treat and the components of care they provide. Methods: This scoping review will be conducted in line with the Joanna Briggs Institute framework for scoping reviews. The Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-analysis extension for scoping reviews (PRISMA-ScR) will be used to guide the reporting of this review. This review will include published studies of any design that are focussed on APP assessment and/ or subsequent treatment in the ED or urgent care setting among adults. The electronic databases: Medline (Ovid), Pubmed, CINAHL Complete, EMBASE, Epistemonikos, Central Register of Controlled Trials in the Cochrane Library and Scopus, trial registries and grey literature databases will be searched. The reference list of included sources of evidence in the review will be searched for additional sources. The methodological quality of the studies will not be formally explored. Relevant data will be extracted from each article using a predefined data extraction form by two independent reviewers. Data synthesis will be derived from the ‘PCC’ framework (population, concept, and context). Conclusions: This scoping review will serve to characterise the roles, responsibilities, levels of expertise and the specific components of care that APP offers in urgent and emergency care settings.