Chinese People within End of Life Care in Community Settings: A Scoping Review

Problem

End of life (EoL) care is becoming a global challenge and a public health issue as a large number of people involved and unmet needs population (WHO, 2014). Promoting community based EoL care helps reach people who are in needs. Culture has a profound influence on our understanding of what is appropriate care for patients at the end of life, however the evidence base is paucity, particularly in Chinese cultural background. The researches focused on Chinese people within end of life care in community settings are under-resourced. It’s needed to assess the breadth of a body of literature in this area and identify gaps in existing literature.

Approach

A systematic scoping review was carried out to address the identified review question--‘What does know about Chinese people within EoL care in community settings?’. This approach enables to systematically assess the breadth of a body of literature in this particular research area. It’s particularly useful when mapping broad areas of research and helping to identify gaps in existing literature. Using this approach, we conducted systematic searches following search strategy, reviewed, categorised and synthesised a large volume of published research on Chinese people within end of life care in community settings. Quality assessment was not conducted.

Findings

The results indicate the number of publications by year (1993–Feb 2019), the location of publications, the methods of published studies, the areas of studies focused on, and the participants of studies in the available published literature.

Consequences

The existing literature of this research area varies in the amount of researches conducted, the methods’ application, the focused study areas and the characters of participants in different location. The results suggested that research evidences are needed in caring for Chinese people within EoL in community settings in different country context. The identified gaps of the literature in different location enable researchers to develop future research based on their own country context.