Empathy as a Psychosocial Factor in Improving Rehabilitation Providers’ Cultural Responsiveness and the Reduction of Health Disparities: A Scoping Review
Creators: name: Miles, Angela M.
name: Morgan-Daniel, Jane
name: Pyche, Courtney
Publisher: name: OSF Registries
Year: 2023
Subjects: subject: Other Rehabilitation and Therapy
subject: Medicine and Health Sciences
subject: Rehabilitation and Therapy

description: Objective: The objective of this scoping review is to understand the extent and type of evidence in relation to healthcare providers’ use of empathy in rehabilitation outcomes within the context of cultural responsiveness. Introduction: There is a paucity of literature that defines empathy in the context of managing rehabilitation patients and their respective health outcomes in the United States. Empathy, in healthcare, is inconsistently defined and not frequently referenced in provider-patient interactions in rehabilitation. Little is known about the extent to which empathy is evaluated as a healthcare provider competency and integrated into assessing rehabilitation outcomes with respect to contextual factors (e.g., culturally responsive healthcare). Methods: This proposed scoping review will be guided by the Joanna Briggs Institute (JBI) methodology for scoping reviews (Peters et al., 2015). A test search was completed in PubMed on October 24, 2023, utilizing key terms in title and abstract fields yielded 243 results. The text words from titles and abstracts, as well as controlled vocabulary, were reviewed to establish a complete search strategy. In addition to the test search, a preliminary search of registered protocols related to the preliminary search revealed two relevant protocol registrations (Posa et al., 2022). The registrations were related to a single project that evolved to scoping review. This review extends the knowledge on empathy and rehabilitation outcomes in the context of cultural responsiveness. Searches will include studies in the English language and published after January 1, 1997, after Rehabilitation Science was defined as, “a model of practice and study that encompasses an interdisciplinary approach to maximizing an individual’s functional capacity” (Pope &amp; Brandt, 1997). Electronic databases will be searched (American Psychological Association PsycInfo, CINAHL, Web of Science, Scopus, Embase, and PubMed) using search strategies established in collaboration with university librarians. Retrieved citations will be uploaded to Covidence for an initial title and abstract screen, followed by a full-text screen according to pre-determined inclusion criteria by three independent reviewers. Data will be extrapolated from the articles remaining after full-text review according to an established data extraction table to assess variables and outcomes of interest. Disagreements between reviewers will be resolved by discussion. A summary of details about concepts, context, relevant findings, and applicable study participants will be collected in a data extraction. The results of this process will be presented in a Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-analyses for scoping review (PRISMA-ScR) flow diagram and reported in the scoping review (Tricco et al., 2018). The outcomes will inform and frame subsequent pieces of literature targeting culturally responsive care in rehabilitation in the United States.