Non-Pharmacological Management of Constipation in Oncology Patients Receiving Opioid Therapy: A Scoping Review Protocol

This scoping review aims to analyze the role of nurses in the non-pharmacological management of constipation in oncology patients receiving opioid therapy. The study was conducted in accordance with the JBI guidelines, as outlined in the JBI Manual for Evidence Synthesis (2020), and reported following the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses Extension for Scoping Reviews (PRISMA-ScR). The methodological framework comprised the following stages: (1) identification of the research question; (2) identification of relevant studies; (3) study selection; (4) data extraction and analysis; and (5) synthesis and presentation of the results. The research question was formulated using the Population, Concept, and Context (PCC) strategy: Population—oncology patients receiving opioid therapy; Concept—conservative approaches/non-pharmacological management of constipation; and Context—the role of the enterostomal therapy nurse in clinical practice. The guiding question was: “Which non-pharmacological strategies for the prevention and treatment of opioid-induced constipation in oncology patients are described in the literature within the context of enterostomal therapy nursing practice?”. The review will include quantitative, qualitative, and mixed-methods studies, as well as theoretical and conceptual papers, clinical guidelines, protocols, care bundles, and other clinical practice documents. Studies published in Portuguese and English, with no time restriction, will be considered. Opinion papers, editorials, abstracts, letters to the editor, and duplicate studies will be excluded. The following databases will be searched: Virtual Health Library (BVS) databases (LILACS and BDENF), SciELO, PubMed/MEDLINE, Cochrane Library, and EMBASE via the CAPES Portal. Grey literature sources will also be consulted, including Google Scholar, SciELO Preprints, the Brazilian Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations (BDTD), institutional repositories of universities, and documents from scientific societies, such as stomatherapy and oncology guidelines and protocols. The search strategy will be developed using controlled descriptors from MeSH and DeCS, combined with the boolean operators AND and OR. All identified studies will be exported to an Excel spreadsheet for duplicate removal and organization of the selection process. Study screening will be conducted in two stages: title and abstract screening to exclude studies that do not meet the eligibility criteria, followed by full-text reading to confirm eligibility. Data from the included studies will be extracted using a standardized form containing the following information: author, year, country, study design, objective, description of conservative interventions, results, and recommendations. The results will be presented in tables, charts, and a narrative synthesis, in accordance with JBI recommendations. The study selection process will be illustrated using the PRISMA-ScR flow diagram.