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This scoping review has been prompted by the author’s clinical and research experience of providing pessary care, teaching women how to self-manage their pessary and recruiting women to a study exploring pessary self-management. When women question aspects of pessary self-management such as the potential risks and benefits, and required frequency of self-care and follow-up, it highlights the lack of evidence required to answer these questions. This scoping review therefore aims to map all available evidence about the subject of pessary self-management to identify the available evidence and knowledge gaps providing the basis for future research. The following research questions were formulated: What is known from the literature about pessary self-management?

Pelvic organ prolapse (POP) can be effectively managed using a pessary. A scoping review found that pessary self-management appears to benefit women with no increased risk. Despite this, many are unwilling to self-manage their pessary. At present there is a lack of understanding about what affects willingness to self-manage a pessary. However, there may be relevant, transferable findings from other literature about barriers to the self-management of other chronic conditions. Therefore, this systematic review aims to identify, appraise and synthesise the findings of published qualitative research exploring the barriers and facilitators to self-management of chronic conditions reported by women.

Additional file 1. SPIRIT 2013 Checklist: Recommended items to address in a clinical trial protocol and related documents.