Abstract

This protocol amendment documents changes made during the conduct and analysis of a registered scoping review of virtual Communities of Practice (vCoPs) in healthcare education. The principal amendment is the addition of a linked, theory-informed configurative synthesis to the planned descriptive mapping. Further amendments include an updated literature search, refinement of the review questions, operational clarification of eligibility criteria, expansion of data charting, discontinuation of a standalone governance question due to insufficient reporting, and clarification of the roles of theory, author consultation and reflexivity. The literature search was updated on 22 October 2024 using the same seven databases, core search concepts and absence of date or language restrictions as the original search. The review remains a scoping review, with the configurative synthesis providing an additional analytic component linked to the scoping map. The amendment serves as a transparent retrospective record of methodological development and does not present the configurative synthesis as prospectively prespecified. Reporting continues to follow PRISMA-ScR.