Trauma-informed family carer education and practical skills training in dementia: a systematic scoping review protocol

Introduction: The incurable and progressive nature of dementia requires complex care, the majority of which is provided via informal caring by family members within the family home. Carers experience significant stress absorbing the challenging care needs of their family member and require education and training that can support and sustain family caring arrangements while considering the psychological distress that threatens caring breakdown. The aim of this scoping review was to map the evidence of trauma-informed principles within education and practical skills training in dementia family caring.

Methods and analysis: A two-step approach to the selection of literature will be used. In step 1, the review will consider research on active intervention education and practical skills training to support family home-based informal care for individuals with a formal diagnosis of dementia. The review will exclude passive education and self-accessed information/training provision. Only literature in the context of 'informal' day-to-day family caring provided by a family member or friend that takes place in the family home or residence will be included. Education and practical skills training provision within specialist care environments will be excluded. In step 2, during the full-text screen, only research where either explicit or implicit use of trauma-informed approaches has been used will be included.Preliminary searches of MEDLINE Ovid and Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health Literature (CINAHL) were carried out between March and May 2023 to identify literature in this area. In line with the Johanna Briggs Institute scoping review guidance, we will conduct a search of published literature within MEDLINE Ovid, Embase Ovid, CINAHL EBSCO, Cochrane Data for Systematic Reviews and Cochrane Central Register for Controlled Trials in the Cochrane Library, PsycINFO Ovid and the British Library EThOS e-theses online. Publications in English with a date range of 1990 to current, with no restriction on geographical region will be considered. The search will be managed by Rayyan software and screened by multiple independent researchers. Results will be presented using narrative summaries and tables.We collaborated with an experienced Academic Support Librarian to develop the MEDLINE Ovid search strategy (Appendix 1), which will be adapted for searching other databases.

Ethics and dissemination: Ethical approval was not required for this review, as it involved the synthesis of publicly available secondary data. The findings will be disseminated through publication in peer-reviewed journals, as well as presentations at national and international conferences. Additionally, stakeholder events will engage carers, individuals with lived experience, and healthcare professionals.