Nurses’ role in deprescribing for older adults: a scoping review protocol

Polypharmacy, defined as the concurrent use of five or more medications, is a common issue among older adults. Deprescribing, the process of supervised withdrawal of inappropriate medications by healthcare professionals, aims to manage polypharmacy and improve health outcomes. While the roles of doctors and pharmacists in deprescribing are well-documented, the contributions of nurses remain underexplored. This scoping review aims to map existing research and explore nurses' involvement in deprescribing for older adults, within the multidisciplinary team, in both hospital and community settings. Following the guidelines from the Joanna Briggs Institute (JBI) and the PRISMA-ScR 2020 framework, the review will search databases CINAHL, Embase, MEDLINE (Ovid), Web of Science (WoS), Scopus and Google Scholar without restrictions on time. Two reviewers will independently evaluate and extract data from eligible studies using a standardized form.