A Scoping Literature Review: The State of Knowledge on Home Care Equipment and Supplies.

We explored the state of knowledge on home care supplies and equipment because not much is known about this topic. We used a scoping review for the literature review because it was the most appropriate approach considering the state of the literature. We searched for articles published in both the gray and peer-reviewed literature. We established five overarching themes based on the findings. These were supply management, durable medical equipment, wound care, best practices, and costs.This review demonstrates that although knowledge about home care supplies and equipment is growing, it is still an understudied area.Keywords: home care; home care supplies and equipment; wound care; wound supplies; durable medical equipmentHome care programs are growing substantially across Canada and elsewhere. This is in part caused by the unprecedented growth rate of Canada's elderly population (Public Health Agency of Canada, 2009; World Health Organization, 2002), more children with complex and debilitating medical conditions living longer and outside of institutions, and the shiftto provide more home care rather than facility-based care. Not only does home care provide essential care and services to clients, many of whom are older adults (Health Council of Canada, 2012) but it also provides supplies and durable medical equipment (DME) to those who need it. Unfortunately, little is known about the state of knowledge about home care supplies and equipment.Knowledge of best practices helps inform policy in the home care system. Literature is one source of best practice knowledge (particularly research-based literature). In this literature review, we explored international peer-reviewed and gray literature (e.g., policy and government documents as well as industry-produced literature) relating to home care supplies and equipment. The research question guiding our review was "What is the state of knowledge about home care supplies and equipment?"A SCOPING REVIEW APPROACHWe chose a scoping review approach to examine the literature because that was the most appropriate given the state of knowledge in this area. This review method is recommended when multiple types of studies are pertinent to the research question and when the amount of literature is sparse (Arksey & O'Malley, 2005). Poth and Ross (2009) outline why choosing this methodology is the best approach when dealing with an underdeveloped body of literature.First, the criteria for exclusion and inclusion are not based on quality of the studies but on relevance. Scoping reviews are exploratory, and so all results from all studies on a topic are included. Second, all data from the included studies is charted, and themes and key issues are identified. Because of the broad inclusion criteria compared to a meta-analysis or systematic review, these themes can help the researchers to identify gaps in the existing research.METHODSSearch StrategyWe selected keyword combinations to start our search for relevant articles. Our stafflibrarian began the search, always using "home care" and/or "community care" as one of the keywords. These were paired with one or more of the following terms: health supplies, assistive technology device, inventory control, supply provision, and supply cost. Our librarian retrieved the article list on January 23, 2012, at the University of Alberta.We searched the CINAHL, OVID Medline (including In-Process & Other Non-Indexed Citations), Scopus, Social Science Research Network, Social Policy and Practice, Health Systems Evidence, and Sociological Abstracts databases (see Table 1). We selected these databases to include literature from the health sciences, sociology, and policy development areas. We employed snowball search techniques; searching the names of authors of relevant literature to see if they produced any more content on the subject. We also reviewed the bibliographies of relevant articles to find related content. …