Background: Nursing professional practice in different contexts of care has been widely described in evidence-based\nliterature. Currently, there is no consensus on a common structure for these descriptions. Understanding and\ncomparing similar practices is made difficult by the varying nature of descriptions provided in scientific literature.\nPurpose of the study: 1) to report research methods found in the scientific literature that were used to describe the\npractice of different health professionals; 2) to report on the main concepts used to describe the practice of these\nhealth professionals; 3) to propose a structure for the description of the practice in nursing.\nMethods: A scoping review following a five-stage approach: 1) identifying the research question; 2) identifying\nrelevant studies; 3) selecting studies; 4) charting data; 5) reporting results. The Medline, CINAHL, psychARTICLES,\npsyCRITIQUES, psycEXTRA, Psychology and Behavioral Science Collection and psycINFO databases were searched. Each\nstudy was analyzed and extracted data were classified by categories and structures used to describe the health\nprofessional practices.\nResults: Forty-nine studies were included. In these studies, quantitative, qualitative or mixed methods were used to\ndescribe professional practice in different health disciplines. Three major concepts were reported most frequently in\ndescribing professional practice: roles, domains and activities. The concepts varied greatly among authors. We found\nthat to define roles or to characterize a professional practice, activities must be described and organized on the basis\nof different domains.\nConclusions: A promising structure for describing nursing professional practice is proposed by the authors of this\nreview. The structure facilitates the accurate description of all domains and activities performed by nurses in different\ncontexts of practice, and will contribute to the development of knowledge about nursing practice in different contexts\nbased on shared concepts.
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