Jurnal Internasional Afrika vol. 11 issue 1 2021
African Journal of Emergency Medicine
Guidance we can trust? The status and quality of prehospital clinical guidance in sub-Saharan Africa: A scoping review

Dublin Core

Title

Jurnal Internasional Afrika vol. 11 issue 1 2021
African Journal of Emergency Medicine
Guidance we can trust? The status and quality of prehospital clinical guidance in sub-Saharan Africa: A scoping review

Subject

Emergency care
Prehospital
Guideline development
Scoping review
Guideline quality

Description

Introduction: Prehospital care is integral in addressing sub-Saharan Africa’s (SSA) high injury and illness burden.
Consequently, robust, high-quality prehospital guidance documents are needed to inform care. These guidance
documents include, but are not limited to, clinical practice guidelines (CPGs), protocols and algorithms that are
contextually appropriate for SSA. However, SSA prehospital guidance mostly originates from the ‘Global North,’
with limited guidance for Africa by Africans. To strengthen prehospital clinical practice in SSA, we described and
appraised all prehospital SSA guidance documents informing clinical decision making.
Methods: We conducted a scoping review of prehospital-relevant guidance documents, including CPGs, algorithms,
protocols and position statements originating from SSA. We performed a comprehensive literature search
in various databases (PUBMED and SCOPUS), guideline clearing houses (Scottish Intercollegiate Guidelines
Network, Trip, and Guidelines International Network), journals, various forms of grey literature and contacted
experts. Guidance document screening and data extraction was done independently, in duplicate and reviewed
by a third author. Guidance quality was then determined using the AGREE II tool and data were analysed using
simple descriptive statistics.
Results: We included 51 guidance documents from 13 countries across SSA after screening 2320 potential documents.
The majority of guidance documents lacked an evidence foundation, made recommendations based on
expert input, and were predominantly end-user presentations such as algorithms or protocols. Overall, reporting
quality was poor, specifically for critical domains such as rigour of development; however, clarity of presentation
was generally strong. Guidance topics were focused around resuscitation and common diseases (both communicable
and non-communicable) with major gaps identified across a variety of topics; such as mental health for
example.
Conclusion: The majority of prehospital clinical guidance from SSA provides clinicians with excellent ready to use
end-user material. Conversely, most of the guidance documents lack an appropriate evidence foundation and fail
to transparently report the guidance development process, highlighting the need to strengthen and build
guideline development capacity to promote the transition from eminence-based to evidence-based guidance for
prehospital care in SSA. Guideline developers, professional societies and publishers need to be aware of international
and local guidance document development and reporting standards in order to produce guidance we can

Creator

Petrus Malherbe , Pierre Smit , Kartik Sharma , Michael McCaul

Source

www.elsevier.com/locate/afjem

Date

17 August 2020

Contributor

peri irawan

Format

pdf

Language

english

Type

text

Files

Tags

,Repository, Repository Horizon University Indonesia, Repository Universitas Horizon Indonesia, Horizon.ac.id, Horizon University Indonesia, Universitas Horizon Indonesia, HorizonU, Repo Horizon ,

Citation

Petrus Malherbe , Pierre Smit , Kartik Sharma , Michael McCaul , “Jurnal Internasional Afrika vol. 11 issue 1 2021
African Journal of Emergency Medicine
Guidance we can trust? The status and quality of prehospital clinical guidance in sub-Saharan Africa: A scoping review,” Repository Horizon University Indonesia, accessed November 21, 2024, https://repository.horizon.ac.id/items/show/2466.