Oral health professionals and child abuse and neglect: a scoping review protocol

ABSTRACT Introduction Child abuse and neglect can seriously impair social development, learning, physical, and psychological health. Oral health practitioners can recognize the orofacial manifestations of maltreatment in a dental setting, provide necessary support, and refer concern to child protection agencies to prevent further harm. There is a need to understand the responsiveness of oral health practitioners to a child protection concern. This protocol outlines the systematic processes to map evidence in the field of child protection in oral health. Methods and analysis This review will be guided by the PRISMA-ScR and the JBI guidelines. Primary and secondary studies, reviews, guidelines, and editorial articles written in English will be included in the review. A three-step search will be implemented. An initial search is conducted to finalised the search terms and eligbility criteria followed by a second search involving sensitive searches of databases (Scopus, MEDLINE, CINAHL, Dentistry & Oral Science Source, and Cochrane Library). A third search will involve grey literature searching for unpublished materials. Government and international health organization websites will be searched during the third search. Eligible studies will be screened based on the participants (oral health practitioners), the concept (child protection) and the context (dental setting) and data extracted by two reviewers. Outcomes from the data extraction chart will be synthesized through exploratory narratives. Ethics and dissemination This study involves neither human participants nor unpublished secondary data. As such, ethics approval is not required. Findings will be disseminated through publication in a peer-reviewed journals, professional networks, and conferences. Strengths and limitations of this study This study will systemically identify literature from a broad range of databases and map evidence in the field of child protection in oral health. The review will take a rigorous approach adhering to the PRISMA-ScR and and the JBI guidelines. Multiple reviewers will conduct screening and data extraction independently to facilitate reliability. A limitation is that only sources in English will be reviewed.