Bioethics in Childbirth Care: Protocol for a Scoping Review (Preprint)

Abstract

UNSTRUCTURED Introduction Ensuring women's rights during childbirth care, based on humanized and bioethical principles, results in better quality of care and patient safety, providing positive childbirth experiences. We aim to explore the available evidence on the application of bioethical principles in the general context of childbirth care. Methods and analysis Our scoping review will follow the Joanna Briggs Institute scoping review methods manual. Published and unpublished bibliographic materials will be considered, based on the following inclusion criteria: reports of the application of bioethical principles (concept) in assistance to pre-delivery, childbirth and postpartum (population) in the hospital context (context). We will search for relevant studies in PubMed, VHL including MEDLINE, LILACS and BDENF, SCiELO, Web of Science and Google Scholar. Two reviewers will perform the screening of titles and abstracts, read the full texts and extract data from the selected articles. The data will be organized and expressed in categories based on their content. The analysed data will be presented through flowcharts, Tables and descriptive narratives. Ethics and dissemination A paper summarising the findings from this review will be published in a peer reviewed journal. In addition, a synthesis of the key findings will be disseminated to health services linked to University Hospitals in Brazil. They will also be shared with the academic community and policy makers involved in the Childbirth Assistance Network which will potentially adopt our recommendations in their decision-making process regarding childbirth care practice in Brazil. The conclusions from this review will inform, through the translation of knowledge, childbirth support groups, feminist movements, movements in favour of humanization of childbirth and other childbirth support networks in the country. Registration details: Our protocol was registered prospectively with the Open Science Framework (https://osf.io/kczyr/).