Opportunities for nurses aspiring to or undertaking clinical academic development globally: protocol for a scoping review

Introduction: Nurse researchers often lack awareness of how to start a clinical academic research career and often lack clear entry routes. This scoping review aims to identify the range and nature of clinical academic opportunities available for nurses. This will also identify the knowledge gaps and provide the basis for future research.

Methods and analysis: The review will be conducted using scoping review methodology and reported in accordance with Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses with the Extension for Scoping Reviews guidelines. We will search CINAHL (EBSCO), MEDLINE (Ovid), AMED (Ovid) and ProQuest using a search based on the facet's 'nurse', 'research' and 'clinical academic'. Grey literature and a hand search of the reference lists will be conducted for additional publications meeting the inclusion and exclusion criteria. We will include articles published in English, with a focus on registered nurses interested in undertaking clinical academic development within any healthcare system, with no restrictions regarding the date of publication. Following initial screening of titles and abstracts, relevant full-text papers will be screened for inclusion. Two independent reviewers will participate in an iterative process of screening the literature, paper selection and data extraction. We will use a prespecified form to extract data which will be charted and presented in a tabular form. Samples of data extraction and charting will be checked by a second reviewer. This will support a narrative summary structured around key identified variables agreed on iteratively by the review team.

Ethics and dissemination: No ethical or Health Research Authority approval is required to undertake this scoping review. The findings will inform future research exploring the opportunities supporting nurses aspiring to undertake clinical academic development and be disseminated via presentations at national conferences and publications in peer-reviewed journals.

Study registration: Open Science Framework, DOI:10.17605/OSF.IO/WVDXH.