There is substantial literature on opioid pharmacotherapies from a service user perspective, mostly focused on methadone and buprenorphine. However, as a relatively new formulation, much less is known about user experiences and views of Long-Acting Injectable Buprenorphine (LAIB). To date, no published reviews have qualitatively described LAIB service user experience. The objective of this scoping review is to identify and describe the peer-reviewed qualitative studies examining the service user experience of LAIB.

This scoping review will follow the methodology described by Arksey and O’Malley, further adapted by Levac et al and others. The search strategy will be developed in collaboration with an expert librarian and will include searches of Medline, Embase, PsycINFO, CINAHL, Scopus and Web of Science as well as citation chaining. The search dates will range from 2016, when LAIB was first approved, to the date of the final search. Included studies will investigate the perspectives and experiences of LAIB treatment participants with opioid dependence, within an Opioid Treatment Programme (OTP). For service users, the pharmacological formulation of LAIB significantly reshapes both the clinical practice and the social dynamics within OTPs. To effectively capture the depth and nuance of service users’ experiences, this review will be limited to qualitative, mixed-method, case series or case study designs, with a further restriction to peer-reviewed articles published in English. Identified references, with duplicates removed, will be imported into Covidence for title/abstract screening, full-text review and data extraction by two independent reviewers. All decisions on data inclusion or exclusion will be by consensus agreement, using a third reviewer if necessary. A living experience researcher will lead analysis of manuscript content in NVivo using inductive coding to produce a descriptive thematic analysis. The narrative summary will present key study characteristics, quality appraisal and synthesised findings that describe service user experiences and perspectives of LAIB, guided by the Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analysis for Scoping Reviews checklist.

This scoping review undertakes secondary analysis of data in the public domains only and thus does not require ethics approval given no participants are directly involved. The results of the review will be published in a peer-reviewed journal, presented at relevant academic and community conferences, and discussed and disseminated to/with community organisations, service users and policy-makers.

Prepublication history and additional supplemental material for this paper are available online. To view these files, visit: Open Science Framework https://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/XMHKN.