Factors that influence the implementation of health and social care Standards: a systematic review and meta-summary protocol

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Health and social care Standards are evidence-based statements that demonstrate a desired level of care. Setting Standards for health and social care is a mechanism by which quality improvements can be achieved. Limited evidence exists on appropriate implementation strategies to overcome challenges with implementing Standards. The aim of this protocol is to set out a comprehensive plan to undertake a systematic search, appraisal and mixed research synthesis of the international literature that examines factors that hinder and facilitate implementation of health and social care Standards in order to inform the design of implementation strategies. A research question, “What are the enablers and barriers to implementing health and social care Standards in health and social care services?” was designed using the ‘SPICE’ (Setting, Perspectives, Interest phenomenon of, Comparison, Evaluation) framework. Electronic databases, grey literature and reference lists from included studies will be searched. Primary qualitative, quantitative descriptive and mixed methods studies reporting on enablers and barriers to implementing nationally endorsed Standards, will be included. The review will focus on experiences and perspectives from multi-level stakeholders including patient and public involvement. The quality of studies will be appraised using appropriate tools and findings used to weight interpretation of findings. Search outputs, data extraction and quality appraisal will be undertaken by two reviewers independently. Sandelowski meta-summary will be used to synthesise the data. Frequency and intensity effect sizes of enablers and barriers will be calculated to evaluate their prevalence across the studies. The Confidence in Evidence from Reviews of Qualitative research (CERQual) approach will be applied to assess confidence in the findings of the review. Findings from this examination will inform influencing factors to implementation. Subsequently, this will contribute to pairing Standards with appropriate implementation strategies that will optimise the enabling factors and overcome challenges to implementation.