Educational materials for patients with chronic kidney disease: a scoping review

Background. Chronic kidney disease (CKD) represents a public health challenge due to its high prevalence and substantial, clinical, social, and economic burden. Patients often receive insufficient guidance about the self-care practices required at each stage of the disease. The potential deficit of structured, stage-appropriate educational guidance contributes to suboptimal management. The 2024 KDIGO guideline provides recommendations for topics that educational programs should cover at each disease stage to help patients take an active role in their own care. However, the availability and contents of existing educational materials for CKD patients remain unclear, particularly regarding how these materials address the educational topics recommended by the 2024 KDIGO guideline. This scoping review aims to map existing educational materials in all formats for adults with CKD, assess the extent to which they incorporate KDIGO-2024-recommended educational topics, and identify existing gaps. Design. This study is a scoping review conducted according to the methodological guidance of the Joanna Briggs Institute (JBI) and reported following the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses Extension for Scoping Reviews (PRISMA-ScR). Data sources. The search will be conducted across MEDLINE/PubMed, the Cochrane Library, ResearchGate, and grey literature sources. Eligibility criteria. Eligible materials will include 1) educational resources in any format directed at patients with CKD and/or their caregivers and/or healthcare personnel, stage G1-G5, and 2) educational materials that address any of the contents defined in the KDIGO 2024 guideline’s strategy for effective patient education programs. Data extraction and synthesis. Data will be extracted independently by two reviewers; any discrepancies will be resolved by consensus and, if necessary, with a third reviewer. A pre-designed extraction form will be used to capture the format of the educational material and the topics by stage of the condition, according to the strategy for effective patient education programs for chronic kidney disease established in the KDIGO 2024 Clinical Practice Guideline. The findings will be synthesized to map which KDIGO-recommended educational topics are addressed across the materials, countries, languages, and formats, and to identify content gaps and topics that may require further development