Introduction: Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is being increasingly reported among survivors of critical illness and injury. Previous work has demonstrated that PTSD reduces patient quality of life and ability to return to work, as well as increases healthcare costs. As such, identifying interventions aimed at preventing the development of critical illness-related PTSD could have an important public health impact. The objective of this systematic review is to collate the world’s literature on early interventions aimed at preventing PTSD among survivors of critical illness.

Methods and analysis: We will perform a qualitative systematic review of human clinical trials of interventions aimed at preventing or reducing critical illness-related PTSD symptoms. We will methodically search CENTRAL, MEDLINE, Embase and CINAHL. We will also search websites containing details on clinical trials registration (National Library of Medicine’s ClinicalTrials.gov and the WHO’s International Clinical Trials Registry Platform), as well as screen reference lists of the articles we select for inclusion to identify additional studies for potential inclusion. Two authors will independently review all search results. After identification and inclusion of articles, we will use a standardised form for data extraction. We will use tables to describe the study type, populations, interventions tested and timing of interventions, outcome measures and effects of interventions on outcome measures compared with control groups. This review will be completed between 1 August 2017 and 31 August 2017.