Community support for injured patients: A scoping review and narrative synthesis

Rashi Jhunjhunwala; Anusha Jayaram; Carol Mita; Justine Davies; Kathryn Chu

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0289861

Peer Review History

Original SubmissionJuly 26, 2023
25 Sep 2023 Decision Letter - Rayan Jafnan Alharbi, Editor PONE-D-23-23344Community Support for Injured Patients: A Scoping Review and Narrative SynthesisPLOS ONE Dear Dr. Jhunjhunwala, Thank you for submitting your manuscript to PLOS ONE. After careful consideration, we feel that it has merit but does not fully meet PLOS ONE’s publication criteria as it currently stands. Therefore, we invite you to submit a revised version of the manuscript that addresses the points raised during the review process. Please submit your revised manuscript by Nov 09 2023 11:59PM. If you will need more time than this to complete your revisions, please reply to this message or contact the journal office at plosone@plos.org. When you're ready to submit your revision, log on to https://www.editorialmanager.com/pone/ and select the 'Submissions Needing Revision' folder to locate your manuscript file. 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The PLOS ONE style templates can be found at https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/file?id=wjVg/PLOSOne_formatting_sample_main_body.pdf and https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/file?id=ba62/PLOSOne_formatting_sample_title_authors_affiliations.pdf 2. We notice that your supplementary file is included in the manuscript file. Please remove them and upload them with the file type 'Supporting Information'. Please ensure that each Supporting Information file has a legend listed in the manuscript after the references list. [Note: HTML markup is below. Please do not edit.] Reviewers' comments: Reviewer's Responses to Questions Comments to the Author 1. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions? The manuscript must describe a technically sound piece of scientific research with data that supports the conclusions. Experiments must have been conducted rigorously, with appropriate controls, replication, and sample sizes. The conclusions must be drawn appropriately based on the data presented. Reviewer #1: No Reviewer #2: Yes Reviewer #3: Partly ******** 2. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously? Reviewer #1: No Reviewer #2: Yes Reviewer #3: N/A ****** 3. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available? The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception (please refer to the Data Availability Statement in the manuscript PDF file). The data should be provided as part of the manuscript or its supporting information, or deposited to a public repository. For example, in addition to summary statistics, the data points behind means, medians and variance measures should be available. If there are restrictions on publicly sharing data—e.g. participant privacy or use of data from a third party—those must be specified. Reviewer #1: Yes Reviewer #2: Yes Reviewer #3: Yes ****** 4. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English? PLOS ONE does not copyedit accepted manuscripts, so the language in submitted articles must be clear, correct, and unambiguous. Any typographical or grammatical errors should be corrected at revision, so please note any specific errors here. Reviewer #1: No Reviewer #2: Yes Reviewer #3: No ****** 5. Review Comments to the Author Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters) Reviewer #1: Although the topic of study is very important, the article is not suitable for publication. Range of time interval of studies under review is very wide. Table 1 could have been presented in prose, Table 2 should have been attached to the article. Poor graphs are presented, no statistical methods are used to answer the researcher's question, and it does not add new findings to the existing literature. Reviewer #2: The studies in this review identified positive benefits of community support groups for injured people, including creation of a group identity and regaining of self-esteem, emotional support and guidance, and delivery of practical knowledge about their disease, recovery and treatment process, or ways to access medical, legal, or social support. However, there are inconsistencies in the fonts, some of which are neo-Roman. Please correct it as requested by PLOS ONE. Reviewer #3: Overall, the paper is well-written in terms of the English language, and the conclusion aligns with the findings of this review to some extent. However, there are a few areas that need attention: -The aim of the review appears broader than what is initially stated in the research question. Clarifying the alignment between the research question and the review's objectives would enhance the paper's coherence. - It's noted that 13 studies were excluded due to unavailability of full texts, but there is no mention of efforts made to retrieve them, such as contacting the authors. Additionally, the potential impact of excluding these studies on the conclusions should be addressed in the limitations section. - The discussion section requires a complete rewrite rather than just improvements. It lacks a clear flow and connection with the results section. Instead, it introduces new information that should have been integrated into the results. Furthermore, the emphasis on the scarcity of studies from low and middle-income countries diverts attention from discussing the actual results and comparing them with other studies. I have attached a file with more detailed comments for your reference. ****** 6. PLOS authors have the option to publish the peer review history of their article (what does this mean?). If published, this will include your full peer review and any attached files. If you choose “no”, your identity will remain anonymous but your review may still be made public. Do you want your identity to be public for this peer review? For information about this choice, including consent withdrawal, please see our Privacy Policy. Reviewer #1: No Reviewer #2: No Reviewer #3: No ******** [NOTE: If reviewer comments were submitted as an attachment file, they will be attached to this email and accessible via the submission site. Please log into your account, locate the manuscript record, and check for the action link "View Attachments". If this link does not appear, there are no attachment files.] While revising your submission, please upload your figure files to the Preflight Analysis and Conversion Engine (PACE) digital diagnostic tool, https://pacev2.apexcovantage.com/. PACE helps ensure that figures meet PLOS requirements. To use PACE, you must first register as a user. Registration is free. Then, login and navigate to the UPLOAD tab, where you will find detailed instructions on how to use the tool. If you encounter any issues or have any questions when using PACE, please email PLOS at figures@plos.org. Please note that Supporting Information files do not need this step. Attachments Attachment Submitted filename: PONE-D-23-23344.HA.pdf https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0289861.r001
Revision 1
27 Nov 2023 Author Response Dear Reviewers and Academic Editor, Thank you very much for your thorough evaluation of our manuscript, “Community Support for Injured Patients: A Scoping Review and Narrative Synthesis.” We have responded to the comments and suggestions made by all reviewers, and edited the manuscript as suggested. Please see below for our point-by-point responses. Both a marked/track changes version and unmarked version of the revised manuscript have also been submitted for review. Best, Rashi Jhunjhunwala and co-authors. Reviewer #1 COMMENT: Although the topic of study is very important, the article is not suitable for publication. RESPONSE: We hope you will change this opinion after reviewing our revised manuscript. COMMENT: Range of time interval of studies under review is very wide. RESPONSE: We do not view this as a detriment to our study. We aimed to evaluate the research that has been done on community-based peer support groups for injured patients, and we wanted to include all research that we were able to access. We did not see a need to limit our search to any specific time frame. COMMENT: Table 1 could have been presented in prose, Table 2 should have been attached to the article. RESPONSE: We chose to present table 1 in table format because we found it easier to quickly reference inclusion/exclusion criteria in this manner. Additionally, this is a format that is commonly used in scoping reviews. Table 2 is included at the bottom of the manuscript and was able to be located by other reviewers. COMMENT: Poor graphs are presented, no statistical methods are used to answer the researcher's question, and it does not add new findings to the existing literature. RESPONSE: The methodology utilized in this review is detailed in the Methods section of the manuscript. While no statistical methods were included, there are other valid research methodologies that exist; one of these is narrative synthesis. We refer the reviewer to the following publication from the Joanna Briggs Institute to gain insight into the ways data can be analyzed and presented in a scoping review: Pollock, Danielle1; Peters, Micah D.J.2,3,4; Khalil, Hanan5; McInerney, Patricia6; Alexander, Lyndsay7,8; Tricco, Andrea C.9,10,11; Evans, Catrin12; de Moraes, Érica Brandão13,14; Godfrey, Christina M.11; Pieper, Dawid15,16; Saran, Ashrita17,18; Stern, Cindy1; Munn, Zachary1. Recommendations for the extraction, analysis, and presentation of results in scoping reviews. JBI Evidence Synthesis 21(3):p 520-532, March 2023. \| DOI: 10.11124/JBIES-22-00123 Reviewer #2 COMMENT: The studies in this review identified positive benefits of community support groups for injured people, including creation of a group identity and regaining of self-esteem, emotional support and guidance, and delivery of practical knowledge about their disease, recovery and treatment process, or ways to access medical, legal, or social support. However, there are inconsistencies in the fonts, some of which are neo-Roman. Please correct it as requested by PLOS ONE. RESPONSE: Fonts have been standardized to adhere to PLOS ONE guidelines. Reviewer #3 COMMENT: The aim of the review appears broader than what is initially stated in the research question. Clarifying the alignment between the research question and the review's objectives would enhance the paper's coherence. RESPONSE: Thank you for this comment. We have revised the aims and research question. The aims now read: “This scoping review aims to identify the extent, distribution, benefits, utility, and impact of community-based peer support groups for injured patients”. The research question reads: “what research has been done on the extent, distribution, benefits, utility, and impact of health-system independent community-based support groups (i.e. those which are not based in healthcare facilities or run by healthcare professionals) for injured persons?” COMMENT: It's noted that 13 studies were excluded due to unavailability of full texts, but there is no mention of efforts made to retrieve them, such as contacting the authors. Additionally, the potential impact of excluding these studies on the conclusions should be addressed in the limitations section. RESPONSE: This is a very valid point. Many of the results that we were unable to find were find were from the 1980s and early 1990s and contact information for the authors were not available. We have given more detail regarding the extent to which attempts were made to retrieve the articles in the first section of the “Results” – lines 180-183. The text now reads: “Full text was not recoverable for 13 studies due to unavailability online through Harvard libraries, inter-library loan, or other formal retrieval mechanisms. Four of 13 unavailable studies were published prior to 1990 and contact information for the authors was not available. Attempts to contact the other 9 authors were unsuccessful.” We have also included the fact that these were not retrieved in the limitations, as suggested (lines 448-449): There were 13 (out of 112) articles not found by our search strategy that could have added additional insight. COMMENT: The discussion section requires a complete rewrite rather than just improvements. It lacks a clear flow and connection with the results section. Instead, it introduces new information that should have been integrated into the results. Furthermore, the emphasis on the scarcity of studies from low and middle-income countries diverts attention from discussing the actual results and comparing them with other studies. RESPONSE: The discussion has been re-structured to first state main results, discussion of those results, the context in the literature with other conditions, the unique challenges of injury/trauma in formthe lack of literature in LMICs, limitations, and conclusion. The discussion on LMICs and socioeconomic element has been paired down to discuss it as an important context to injury burden, but not to take away from the main results. COMMENT: I have attached a file with more detailed comments for your reference. RESPONSE: Thank you for your thorough and thoughtful comments. We have aimed to respond to them in the track-changes document we have attached for review. These include: - We have standardized the language regarding “community-based peer support groups” throughout the document, and included an acronym, CBPR. - Revised aims and research question, as stated above. - Included more information about missing studies, as stated above. - Included references for each component of the “study characteristics” section of the Results. - Defined each category of “social, emotional, educational, logistical” benefits immediately prior to “figure 2”. - Revised/rewrote discussion, as stated above. - Various sentences/wording have been revised as recommended. Attachments Attachment Submitted filename: Community Support Rebuttal 21.11.23.docx https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0289861.r002
4 Dec 2023 Decision Letter - Rayan Jafnan Alharbi, Editor PONE-D-23-23344R1Community Support for Injured Patients: A Scoping Review and Narrative SynthesisPLOS ONE Dear Dr. Jhunjhunwala, Thank you for submitting your manuscript to PLOS ONE. After careful consideration, we feel that it has merit but does not fully meet PLOS ONE’s publication criteria as it currently stands. Therefore, we invite you to submit a revised version of the manuscript that addresses the points raised during the review process. Please submit your revised manuscript by Jan 18 2024 11:59PM. If you will need more time than this to complete your revisions, please reply to this message or contact the journal office at plosone@plos.org. When you're ready to submit your revision, log on to https://www.editorialmanager.com/pone/ and select the 'Submissions Needing Revision' folder to locate your manuscript file. Please include the following items when submitting your revised manuscript: A rebuttal letter that responds to each point raised by the academic editor and reviewer(s). You should upload this letter as a separate file labeled 'Response to Reviewers'. A marked-up copy of your manuscript that highlights changes made to the original version. You should upload this as a separate file labeled 'Revised Manuscript with Track Changes'. An unmarked version of your revised paper without tracked changes. You should upload this as a separate file labeled 'Manuscript'. If you would like to make changes to your financial disclosure, please include your updated statement in your cover letter. Guidelines for resubmitting your figure files are available below the reviewer comments at the end of this letter. If applicable, we recommend that you deposit your laboratory protocols in protocols.io to enhance the reproducibility of your results. 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Any changes to the reference list should be mentioned in the rebuttal letter that accompanies your revised manuscript. If you need to cite a retracted article, indicate the article’s retracted status in the References list and also include a citation and full reference for the retraction notice. Additional Editor Comments: Thank you for responding to the previous comments. Three minor comments were made by one of the reviewers for your consideration (lines 43, 130, and 392). [Note: HTML markup is below. Please do not edit.] Reviewers' comments: Reviewer's Responses to Questions Comments to the Author 1. If the authors have adequately addressed your comments raised in a previous round of review and you feel that this manuscript is now acceptable for publication, you may indicate that here to bypass the “Comments to the Author” section, enter your conflict of interest statement in the “Confidential to Editor” section, and submit your "Accept" recommendation. Reviewer #3: All comments have been addressed ******** 2. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions? The manuscript must describe a technically sound piece of scientific research with data that supports the conclusions. Experiments must have been conducted rigorously, with appropriate controls, replication, and sample sizes. The conclusions must be drawn appropriately based on the data presented. Reviewer #3: Yes ****** 3. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously? Reviewer #3: N/A ****** 4. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available? The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception (please refer to the Data Availability Statement in the manuscript PDF file). The data should be provided as part of the manuscript or its supporting information, or deposited to a public repository. For example, in addition to summary statistics, the data points behind means, medians and variance measures should be available. If there are restrictions on publicly sharing data—e.g. participant privacy or use of data from a third party—those must be specified. Reviewer #3: Yes ****** 5. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English? PLOS ONE does not copyedit accepted manuscripts, so the language in submitted articles must be clear, correct, and unambiguous. Any typographical or grammatical errors should be corrected at revision, so please note any specific errors here. Reviewer #3: Yes ****** 6. Review Comments to the Author Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters) Reviewer #3: I have added three minor comments for the authors to consider editing. Other than these, the authors have responded well to my previous comments. ****** 7. PLOS authors have the option to publish the peer review history of their article (what does this mean?). If published, this will include your full peer review and any attached files. If you choose “no”, your identity will remain anonymous but your review may still be made public. Do you want your identity to be public for this peer review? For information about this choice, including consent withdrawal, please see our Privacy Policy. Reviewer #3: No ******** [NOTE: If reviewer comments were submitted as an attachment file, they will be attached to this email and accessible via the submission site. Please log into your account, locate the manuscript record, and check for the action link "View Attachments". If this link does not appear, there are no attachment files.] While revising your submission, please upload your figure files to the Preflight Analysis and Conversion Engine (PACE) digital diagnostic tool, https://pacev2.apexcovantage.com/. PACE helps ensure that figures meet PLOS requirements. To use PACE, you must first register as a user. Registration is free. Then, login and navigate to the UPLOAD tab, where you will find detailed instructions on how to use the tool. If you encounter any issues or have any questions when using PACE, please email PLOS at figures@plos.org. Please note that Supporting Information files do not need this step. Attachments Attachment Submitted filename: PONE-D-23-23344_HA1.1.pdf https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0289861.r003
Revision 2
14 Dec 2023 Author Response PONE-D-23-23344 Community Support for Injured Patients: A Scoping Review and Narrative Synthesis Response to Reviewers Dear Reviewers and Academic Editor, Thank you very much for your thorough evaluation of our manuscript, “Community Support for Injured Patients: A Scoping Review and Narrative Synthesis.” We have responded to the comments and suggestions and edited the manuscript as suggested. Please see below for our point-by-point responses. Both a marked/track changes version and unmarked version of the revised manuscript have also been submitted for review. Best, Rashi Jhunjhunwala and co-authors. Reviewer #3 - Spacing (line 43): Extra space has been removed - I previously commented on this issue. You need to decide whether the reference should be before or after the dot: We have standardized all references to be placed before the period. - Add a sentence about heterogeneity and how it could affect your findings (limitations paragraph): The following sentence was added to the Limitations paragraph: “Furthermore, the studies included in this review were heterogeneous both in peer support group characteristics and study design, which limits the generalizability of these findings.” Attachments Attachment Submitted filename: Community Support Response to Reviewers 12.14.23.docx https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0289861.r004
9 Jan 2024 Decision Letter - Rayan Jafnan Alharbi, Editor Community Support for Injured Patients: A Scoping Review and Narrative Synthesis PONE-D-23-23344R2 Dear Dr. Jhunjhunwala, We’re pleased to inform you that your manuscript has been judged scientifically suitable for publication and will be formally accepted for publication once it meets all outstanding technical requirements. Within one week, you’ll receive an e-mail detailing the required amendments. When these have been addressed, you’ll receive a formal acceptance letter and your manuscript will be scheduled for publication. An invoice for payment will follow shortly after the formal acceptance. To ensure an efficient process, please log into Editorial Manager at http://www.editorialmanager.com/pone/, click the 'Update My Information' link at the top of the page, and double check that your user information is up-to-date. If you have any billing related questions, please contact our Author Billing department directly at authorbilling@plos.org. If your institution or institutions have a press office, please notify them about your upcoming paper to help maximize its impact. If they’ll be preparing press materials, please inform our press team as soon as possible, no later than 48 hours after receiving the formal acceptance. Your manuscript will remain under strict press embargo until 2 pm Eastern Time on the date of publication. For more information, please contact onepress@plos.org. Kind regards, Rayan Jafnan Alharbi, Ph.D Academic Editor PLOS ONE https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0289861.r005
Formally Accepted
23 Jan 2024 Acceptance Letter - Rayan Jafnan Alharbi, Editor PONE-D-23-23344R2 PLOS ONE Dear Dr. Jhunjhunwala, I'm pleased to inform you that your manuscript has been deemed suitable for publication in PLOS ONE. Congratulations! Your manuscript is now being handed over to our production team. At this stage, our production department will prepare your paper for publication. This includes ensuring the following: * All references, tables, and figures are properly cited * All relevant supporting information is included in the manuscript submission, * There are no issues that prevent the paper from being properly typeset If revisions are needed, the production department will contact you directly to resolve them. If no revisions are needed, you will receive an email when the publication date has been set. At this time, we do not offer pre-publication proofs to authors during production of the accepted work. Please keep in mind that we are working through a large volume of accepted articles, so please give us a few weeks to review your paper and let you know the next and final steps. Lastly, if your institution or institutions have a press office, please let them know about your upcoming paper now to help maximize its impact. If they'll be preparing press materials, please inform our press team within the next 48 hours. Your manuscript will remain under strict press embargo until 2 pm Eastern Time on the date of publication. For more information, please contact onepress@plos.org. If we can help with anything else, please email us at customercare@plos.org. Thank you for submitting your work to PLOS ONE and supporting open access. Kind regards, PLOS ONE Editorial Office Staff on behalf of Dr. Rayan Jafnan Alharbi Academic Editor PLOS ONE https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0289861.r006

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