Increasing average life expectancy and chronic diseases have increased the demand for long-term healthcare and the need for informal caregivers (1). In 2019, more than a fifth (20.3%) of the European Union population was aged 65 or over. It is projected that there will be close to half a million centenarians in the EU-27 by 2050 (2). Current statistics indicate that between 2018 and 2080, the aging rate will approximately double, and for every 100 young people there will be 300 older adult people (2). According to the National Alliance for Caregiving and Real Possibilities Public Policy Institute, it is expected that by 2030 the number of caregivers will reach 21.5 million and that the time of care will be at least 20 h per week (3).

There are two main types of care for seniors who are aging and need assistance with their care. The first is formal care, which generally refers to paid care offered by medical institutions or trained health professionals to those in need (4). The second type is informal care, which covers unpaid assistance provided by family, close relatives, friends and neighbors. Both formal and informal care involve a variety of activities, but informal caregivers rarely receive adequate training to perform these functions (4).

According to the Family Caregiver Alliance (5), an informal caregiver is any family member, neighbor or friend who has a significant personal relationship and who is able to meet the needs of the older adult person or adult with a chronic or disabling condition. These people may be primary or secondary caregivers and may or may not live with a person receiving care.

More than 300 million residents of the European Union are aged between 18 and 64 and around a third of this population works as caregivers. The percentage of caregivers who only have care responsibilities for incapacitated family members amounts to 12% (6). Data from some countries show that the majority of informal caregivers take care of their parents (51.4%), followed by those who take care of their spouses (18%) and children (12.7%). In addition to the transformation in personal and family life habits, it has also been equitably observed that caregivers have physical, psychological and social needs and also feel the need for information, training and professional support (3).

The multiplicity of tasks performed daily in supporting people in situations of severe dependency translates into levels of intense overload, which has a negative impact on the caregiver’s life, particularly on their health, work, and social activities that are detrimental to their well-being (7). The provision of guidance and support by health and nursing professionals, in order to improve the skills of older adult caregivers, also results in lower levels of overload, physical and emotional exhaustion and, consequently, a better quality of life (8). In the process of transition of the caregiver to the exercise of the role, it’s necessary to acquire and develop skills, namely cognitive, related to knowledge, mastery, inherent to instrumental skills, and knowing how to be, intrinsic to personal development (9). As nurses are the health professionals who have the closest contact with people, families and the community, they act as a preponderant factor in health outcomes (2).

Over the last few years, the care provided by caregivers has been a concern for nurses and consequently for clinical supervision (10). Clinical supervision plays a leading role in the training of caregivers. This is defined as formal process of professional support and learning that provided the development of knowledge and skills in order to take responsibility for one’s own practice, improving the protection of supervisees and the safety of care (11). Over the years, clinical supervision of nurses has been considered a mechanism to promote the quality and safety of care (12). Clinical supervision also plays a preponderant role in the management of health organizations in the sense that it allows the head nurse, as a manager, to develop strategies that promote the quality of care, with direct repercussions on health gains (13).

Training the caregiver implies providing them with knowledge that makes it possible for them to have a better appreciation of themselves, to be able to recognize in themselves their physical and emotional capacities to deal with this new reality, thus arising the need to implement supervisory programs as a way to ensure the training of caregivers (14). Training informal caregivers should be seen as a safe way to obtain better results in rehabilitation, higher levels of autonomy and reduced costs and readmissions (15).

A program can be defined as a systematic and deliberate intervention that results from the identification of the needs of a given population or group, is objective-oriented, and is grounded with theory that will give rigor and credibility to the action. The intervention aims to meet the needs of the recipients (16). An intervention program addresses a set of needs and develops the skills required for positive change. For this reason, a program-based intervention requires a set of actions and resources that are designed, applied and evaluated, in an organized manner, in a given social reality and following a sequence of specific stages (2).

Considering the evidence found on the subject, it is perceived that it is insufficient and unclear, and it is appropriate to carry out a scoping review to map all the supervisory programs implemented by nurses to caregivers in the community. Knowledge about how supervisory programs are implemented by nurses for caregivers is still scarce. Therefore, this lack of knowledge is the reason why the applicability and potential effectiveness of caregiver-provided care is still unknown. For this reason, supervisory mapping programs related for clinical nursing supervision is highly relevant. A scoping review is essential to analyze the extent, scope and nature of the research activity. It is also pertinent to map underdeveloped areas of study (17). A previous search was conducted in MEDLINE, Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews and Open Science Framework (OSF), and no current or ongoing systematic reviews or scoping reviews on the topic were identified.

This scoping review aims to answer the following questions:

A scoping review will be developed and will follow JBI methodology for scoping reviews, while reporting will adhere to PRISMA-ScR guidelines (18) and is registered in the Open Science Framework (https://osf.io/s6wfv/). The review will last 6 months.

It is expected that the results found demonstrate the importance of applying supervision programs to improve the quality of care provided by caregivers. The application of supervisory programs implemented by nurses is an added value for the caregiver in the sense that it will enhance their training to care, to ensure that all the needs of the dependent person are met and consequently guarantee the quality and safety of care. The identification, characterization and synthesis of knowledge in this area will seek to be aligned with the objectives and the proposed review question.

The data will be presented in the form of a narrative summary as well as in the form of tables to summarize all the information collected. The tables will contain the main characteristics of the researched supervisory programs.

With this scoping review, we intend to allow a detailed mapping of the clinical supervision programs that are implemented by the nurse to the caregiver in the community context. We hope that this serves as an incentive for future research in order to contribute to better training the caregiver and to guarantee the quality of care provided. This review is extremely relevant for research, expand the knowledge about clinical supervision in nursing, namely, increase the knowledge about the supervisory programs implemented by the nurse to the caregiver to promote the quality and safety of the care provided.