The searches described in Chapter 2 resulted in inclusion of a total of 204 papers through cycles of searching and synthesis, as described in the Methods chapter and illustrated in the PRISMA flowchart (see Figure 1).

FIGURE 1

PRISMA diagram for CUP-2 screening and selection of papers.

This included 75 papers in the first cycle of electronic database searches: 26 nursing; 26 midwifery and 23 paramedic; 7 key reports; and 29 literature reviews (see Appendix 7, Tables 21–25) and 49 COVID-19 focused papers, reports and literature reviews (see Appendix 3, Tables 15 and 16).

Of the 75 papers included in the first cycle of searches, 35 were empirical papers (18 nursing, 10 midwifery and 7 paramedic) and 40 non-empirical (e.g. editorials, commentaries and other types of papers and grey literature) (8 nursing, 16 midwifery, and 16 paramedic).

Across all 75 papers, 15 focused predominantly on causes (6 nursing, 4 midwifery, 5 paramedic); 38 on interventions (12 nursing, 16 midwifery, 10 paramedic); and the remaining 22 papers focused on both causes and interventions (8 nursing, 6 midwifery, 8 paramedic).

The included literature reviews were a range of different types of review, including systematic, narrative, integrative and scoping reviews (see Appendix 7).