A bibliometric analysis of research on nursing models in countries other than China

Objectives

To deepen our understanding of the status quo and to identify the hot topics and developmental trends of research on nursing models in countries other than China in the most recent decade.

Methods

The study subjects were the publications retrieved from the PubMed database using the MeSH terms of “Models, Nursing”. Bibliographic item co-occurrence mining system (BICOMS) software was used for conventional bibliometric analysis of publications during two time periods, 2005–2009 and 2010–2014. The number of published journal articles, journal distribution, authors of publications, country of origin of journals, and language of publications were analyzed to establish a high-frequency keyword profile and co-occurrence matrix. Graphical clustering toolkit (gCLUTO) software was applied for two-way clustering analysis and visualized analysis.

Results

A total of 1472 journal articles with a key theme of nursing models were retrieved for final analysis, including 771 published during 2005–2009 and 701 during 2010–2014. The bibliometric analysis revealed that publications other than China concerning nursing models were mostly concentrated in the United States and the United Kingdom and that the number of relevant publications has been continuously decreasing. The two-way clustering analysis showed that there were mainly four types of research themes in the relevant publications in countries other than China during 2005–2009, i.e., nursing education and theoretical research, clinical nursing and psychological care, nursing administration, and models of nursing education, whereas there were five types during 2010–2014, i.e., nursing theories and clinical nursing practice, nursing administration models and assessments of nurses' knowledge and skills, community nursing administration models, nursing human resource management, and nursing education models and approaches.

Conclusions

Research on nursing models in countries other than China is relatively mature and stable with a broader view, but it has shown a declining trend in recent years. It emphasizes both theory and practice, with research content tending to be structured into four modules, i.e., nursing education, administration, clinical practice, and theoretical research. Community nursing models may become a key research direction in the international research on nursing models in the future.