Considering Costs in Health Professions Education: A Scoping Review Protocol

Abstract

Abstract Background Profound changes in the healthcare sector and the global shortage of healthcare workers are driving the demand to update and scale-up health professions education (HPE). At the same time, educational institutions are contending with resource scarcity and the decision of where and how to allocate resources must be made conscious of cost. To improve rigor in the economic evidence generated for such decisions, it is necessary to have a better understanding of which costs and costing methods are relevant to HPE. Therefore, this protocol has been developed to outline the rationale and methods for a scoping review of the literature intended to map the current state of cost evidence for HPE. Methods This protocol is developed in accordance with the Joanna Briggs Institute Manual for Evidence Synthesis and PRISMA-ScR guidelines. PubMed, ERIC, CINAHL and PsycInfo will be scoped for all types of English language publications from 2012 onward that investigate costs associated with the education of health professionals. Two independent reviewers will assess publications for eligibility. Data will be extracted on the topic of investigation, educational setting, level of education, type of economic evaluation, methods for cost identification, stakeholder perspective and individual cost components. Discussion This protocol presents the initial concept for an exploratory review of the costs associated with HPE. This format was chosen for its iterative nature, which allows this relatively unexplored topic to be broadly scoped from multiple educational and economic databases and simultaneously narrowed in focus in response to the discovery of evidence. The results from this planned investigation will provide an overview of the existing evidence on costs and costing methods in HPE, which can be used to set a research agenda on economics of HPE and contribute to cost conscious HPE in practice. Trial Registration This protocol was prospectively registered on Open Science Framework (OSF) on June 13, 2022 and is available at https://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/ET4XB.