Diagnostic stewardship is an emerging concept, so far primarily associated with microbiology, specifically antibiotic stewardship. However, its core idea, ensuring ‘the right test at the right time for the right patient’, holds relevance across all areas of clinical medicine. By optimising the diagnostic process, diagnostic stewardship aims to enhance clinical decision-making and promote more effective, efficient and patient-centred care. Key objectives are the reduction of diagnostic errors, namely overdiagnosis, underdiagnosis and misdiagnosis, as well as optimal resource management. The aim of our review was to establish whether and how diagnostic stewardship has been implemented outside the area of antibiotic stewardship.

This scoping review will be conducted in accordance with the Joanna Briggs Institute (JBI) guidelines and reported using the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses extension for scoping reviews (PRISMA-ScR) checklist. Medline, Embase, Web of Science, Scopus, Google Scholar and Proquest Thesis and Dissertation will be searched using a search strategy based on the population, concept, context (PCC) framework, adding an outcome variable. Studies will be screened by two independent reviewers and reported using the PRISMA flowchart. Included will be studies starting from 2015, which will describe stewardship interventions in different diagnostic modalities. Excluded will be results regarding antimicrobial stewardship. No language restriction will be applied. Information on the definition and application of the concept of diagnostic stewardship, as well as general study characteristics, will be extracted using a previously developed and piloted data extraction form. Extracted data will be analysed and reported using narrative and descriptive analysis.

Ethics approval is not required for this scoping review. Dissemination activities include peer-reviewed journal publication and conference presentations.