Barriers to Identifying Violence Against Women in Health Services: A Systematic Review from an Information Science Perspective

This systematic review protocol describes the methodology for a comprehensive synthesis of the evidence on barriers to the identification of violence against women in health services. Violence against women is a major public health issue and a violation of human rights, affecting approximately one in three women worldwide. Although international guidelines recommend that healthcare professionals integrate responses to violence into routine clinical practice, identification rates remain alarmingly low, with only 10% to 30% of cases being detected. This persistent gap highlights the existence of multifaceted barriers operating at multiple levels, including systemic and institutional, professional, relational, patient-related, contextual, and cultural barriers. This systematic review aims to synthesize the available evidence on barriers to the identification of violence against women in health services published between 2020 and 2026 across different national and international contexts. The review will be conducted in accordance with the Joanna Briggs Institute (JBI) Manual for Evidence Synthesis and reported following the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA 2020) guidelines. The search strategy will be conducted in five electronic databases: CINAHL, LILACS, PubMed, Scopus, and Web of Science. Two independent reviewers will perform study selection, data extraction, and methodological quality assessment. The findings will be synthesized using descriptive and narrative approaches, with thematic analysis applied to qualitative evidence.