Ridout, AmeliaAntonio, AnjolaoluwaBolton, JamesChan, EricChisholm, CassandraChow, KristianGanshorn, HeatherGrimminck, RachelMajor, DanielNordstrom, KimberlyPearlmutter, MarkLang, Eddy2023-06-232023-06-232023-06-08Ridout, A., Antonio, A., , Bolton, J., Chan, E., Chisholm, C., Chow, K., Ganshorn, H., Grimminck, R., Major, D., Nordstrom, K., Pearlmutter, M., Lang, E. (2023, June 8). Addictions and Mental Health Patient Boarding in Emergency Departments: Protocol for a Scoping Review. Unpublished manuscript.https://hdl.handle.net/1880/116645Objective: The objective of this scoping review is to understand the extent, nature, and quality of evidence relating to the boarding of addictions and mental health (AMH) patients in emergency departments (EDs). Introduction: ‘Boarding’ refers to the time a patient spends in the ED before being transferred to an inpatient bed after an admission decision has been made (1-4). AMH patients are disproportionately likely to experience boarding (1,4,5). Patients can be boarded in the ED for many hours or days, often under suboptimal conditions that harm their health and wellbeing (6). Despite the ongoing issue of AMH patient boarding in EDs across Canada and globally, there is a lack of scoping or systematic reviews that synthesize the literature on this topic. Inclusion criteria: This scoping review will include peer-reviewed literature of all study designs and methodologies that meets the following inclusion criteria: (1) involve a participant population of pediatric and/or adult patients with substance use and/or mental health disorders, (2) focus on the concept of boarding or delayed transfer, and (3) occur within the context of a hospital ED. Methods: We will search the following electronic databases: MEDLINE, Embase, PsycINFO (on the Ovid platform), and CINAHL (on the Ebsco platform). Covidence software will be used to manage the results of the search, select studies that meet the inclusion criteria, remove duplicates, and extract data. Studies will be critically appraised using JBI critical appraisal checklists (7). Results will be reported in accordance with the PRISMA-ScR checklist (8).enAttribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 Internationalhttp://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/Other