Defining Nurse-Led 'Delayed Recovery' After Sedation Endoscopy: A Scoping Review

In the modern medical system, gastrointestinal endoscopy has firmly established itself as an indispensable standard procedure for the early diagnosis and treatment of gastrointestinal diseases. Whereas endoscopic nursing in the past primarily focused on assistance during the procedure, it has now expanded to encompass comprehensive care across the entire peri-procedural period, including pre-procedural patient assessment, sedation induction, continuous monitoring, and safe post-procedural recovery and discharge management. However, nurses in clinical practice face considerable dilemmas when judging “delayed recovery.” From a medical perspective, recovery is often considered achieved once vital signs have stabilized and consciousness has returned. In contrast, from a nursing perspective, it is difficult to define recovery when patients continue to exhibit drowsiness, complain of severe dizziness, or demonstrate incomplete cognitive recovery that places them at an increased risk of falls. Because delayed recovery following sedated endoscopy differs from recovery after general anesthesia in terms of pharmacokinetic characteristics and clinical context, it is essential to establish an appropriate operational definition and clearly identify its attributes. The purpose of this scoping review is to systematically map how “delayed recovery” after sedated endoscopy has been defined and measured in the existing literature. Through this process, the review aims to clarify the attributes of delayed recovery as intuitively perceived by nurses in clinical practice, thereby laying a theoretical foundation for the future development of nurse-led, safe discharge decision-making protocols.