A Bibliometric Analysis of Missed Nursing Care Research: Current Themes and Way Forward

Background. Missed nursing care adversely affects nurse and patient outcomes in healthcare settings. Comprehensive bibliometric overview of research output in this field is limited, which restricts knowledge of this complex phenomenon in terms of research trends, author’s productivity, and thematic focus of scientific publications. This study aims to examine publications on missed nursing care by conducting a comprehensive bibliometric analysis. Methods. A search was performed in the Scopus database to identify 276 published studies on missed nursing care from inception to 20th February 2022. A bibliometric approach was used to comprehensively analyse retrieved publications based on trend, thematic focus, and scientific production. The R based software was used for data analysis. Results. The result from this bibliometric analysis indicates that the first study performed on the concept of missed nursing care was published in 2006. The United States of America (USA) ranked first in number of publications, and the study by Ball et al. published in 2014 was the most cited paper among the documents analysed. The results also identified names of prolific authors such as Kalisch B.J., Ausserhofer D., Willis E., Papastavrou E., Schubert M., Palese A., Simon M., and Aiken L. H. and relevant institutions in this field. Trending keywords identified included “missed nursing care,” “unfinished nursing care,” “patient safety,” and “care left undone.” In addition, thematic analysis showed emerging themes such as “neonatal intensive care unit,” “patient satisfaction,” “health resources,” “failure to maintain,” and “adverse events.” Conclusion. Findings from this study reveal a lack of bibliometric analysis in missed nursing care research. This study provides significant contribution by presenting a comprehensive overview on thematic focus, hotspots studies, and directions for future research in this field. Findings from this study can guide scholars in defining research focus and aspects of research on missed nursing care for future exploration.