Exploring collaboration between informal caregivers and primary healthcare staff in the care of older adults with multimorbidity: a scoping review

Background:
Older adults with multimorbidity often rely on informal caregivers alongside services provided by primary healthcare staff in community-based care. Collaboration between these parties is considered essential to ensure coordinated, high-quality care—yet current evidence on how such collaboration is practiced remains limited.

Aim:
This scoping review aims to systematically identify and map existing knowledge describing how informal caregivers and primary healthcare staff collaborate in the care of older adults with multimorbidity.

Study design
This scoping review will follow the Joanna Briggs Institute (JBI) methodology for scoping reviews and will adhere to the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses Extension for Scoping Reviews (PRISMA-ScR).

The review process will include the following steps:
- Defining the research question

- Developing and conducting the search strategy, including:
a. Structuring the search using the PCC framework
b. Determining eligible types of evidence sources (databases and grey literature)
c. Establishing inclusion and exclusion criteria
d. Conducting the database and grey literature searches

- Selecting evidence (title/abstract screening followed by full text screening)

- Data extraction: strategy and procedures

- Dataanalyses and synteses

- Presenting the results

- Summarizing and drawing conclusions

- Consulting stakeholders