What do we know about ancillary care practices in East and Southern Africa? A systematic review and meta-synthesis

Kapumba, Blessings M., Desmond, Nicola ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2874-8569 and Seeley, Janet (2021) 'What do we know about ancillary care practices in East and Southern Africa? A systematic review and meta-synthesis'. Wellcome Open Research, Vol 6, p. 164.

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Abstract

Background: Despite growing calls for the provision of ancillary care to study participants during medical research, there remains a noticeable gap in ethical guidelines for medical researchers in resource-constrained settings (RCS). We reviewed recent studies to determine the extent to which ancillary care is provided in East and Southern Africa and to examine the ethical justifications researchers provide to support their views on ancillary care obligations.
Methods: A systematic search for qualitative and mixed methods studies on ancillary care was conducted across MEDLINE, Embase, African Wide Information, PubMed, CINAHL Plus, and Scopus. The NIH Department of Bioethics and H3 Africa websites and Google Scholar were further searched. Studies conducted in East and Southern Africa between 2004 and 2020, as well as those that reported on ancillary care provided to study participants were included. All studies included in this review were evaluated for methodological quality as well as bias risk. NVivo version 12 was used for thematic analysis.
Results: A total of 4,710 articles were identified by the initial search criteria. After the data extraction and quality assessment, 24 articles were included. Key areas presented include ancillary care approaches and the themes of researcher motivation for providing ancillary care and expectations of participants in medical research. The review shows that while some international researchers do provide ancillary care to their study participants, approaches are not standardised without consistent guidelines for ethical practice for ancillary care.
Limitations: We found limited empirical studies in RCS that report on ancillary care, hence findings in this review are based on single studies rather than a collection of multiple studies.
Conclusions: This paper emphasizes the value of establishing ethics guidelines for medical researchers in RCS who consider provision of ancillary care to their participants, and the need to account for these ethical guidelines in medical research.
Keywords: Ancillary Care Practices, Medical Research, Meta-Synthesis, Research Participants, Resource Constrained Settings, East and Southern Africa

Item Type:	Article
Subjects:	W General Medicine. Health Professions > W 20.5 Biomedical research WA Public Health > Health Problems of Special Population Groups > WA 395 Health in developing countries WX Hospitals and Other Health Facilities > Hospital Administration > WX 150 General works
Faculty: Department:	Clinical Sciences & International Health > International Public Health Department
Digital Object Identifer (DOI):	https://doi.org/10.12688/wellcomeopenres.16858.1
Depositing User:	Rachel Dominguez
Date Deposited:	08 Sep 2021 12:49
Last Modified:	08 Sep 2021 12:49
URI:	https://archive.lstmed.ac.uk/id/eprint/18854

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