A study of clinical psychological nursing research hotspots in China and variation trends based on word frequency analysis and visualization analysis

Objective To analyze clinical psychological nursing research hotspots in China and variation trends in order to provide reference points on the current state of development of clinical psychological nursing and future research hotspots. Method Clinical psychological nursing research literature sourced from Wanfang Data for the three periods of 2007–2009, 2010–2012, and 2013–2015 were selected as the research sample. A bibliographic co-occurrence analysis system (BICOMB software) was used to perform keyword word frequency analysis and generate a keyword co-occurrence matrix. In addition, Ucinet software's Netdraw tool was used to create visualized network diagrams. Results A total of 27890 articles were retrieved, and word frequency analysis revealed that the highest-frequency keywords consisted of anxiety, depression, the elderly, expectant women, coronary heart disease, diabetes, breast cancer, perioperative period, quality of life, and psychological intervention. Research hotspot analysis revealed that consistent hotspots comprised anxiety, depression, health education, and perioperative period; expectant women became a hotspot during 2010–2012, and quality of life and efficacy became hotspots during 2013–2015. Conclusions In addition to the care process, clinical psychological nursing research hotspots in China have increasingly included the effectiveness of psychological nursing and impact on patient quality of life. In addition, research hotspots have been influenced by the incidence of illnesses and people's health consciousness.