Brief introductory group education programs for chronic disease patients in chronic disease management: a scoping review protocol.

Objective: This review will scope the literature and map the features of brief introductory group education programs implemented in chronic disease management.

Introduction: Brief introductory group education programs are resource-efficient interventions used in chronic disease management to educate patients about basic disease concepts, self-management strategies, and to introduce specialist services. There is a lack of published research that synthesizes the characteristics, guiding principles, and outcomes reported in brief group education programs in chronic disease management. This scoping review will seek to identify brief introductory group education programs and describe the i) scope of literature available on such programs, ii) characteristics of the programs, iii) guiding self-management principles used and the extent to which programs follow such principles, and iv) types of outcomes reported.

Inclusion Criteria: This review will consider studies describing an introductory or brief group patient education program (one to four sessions, no more than eight hours) for the management of chronic disease in adults with ongoing chronic disease.

Methods: MEDLINE, Scopus, CINAHL, Emcare, Web of Science, and PsycINFO will be searched for English-language articles published from 2001 to the present. Titles and abstracts will be screened against inclusion/exclusion criteria, followed by full-text review, independently assessed by two reviewers. Eligible articles will be extracted and charted using a standardized data extraction form. A descriptive review to summarize and contextualize the extracted data will be conducted.