Bibliometric analysis of nursing education reviews

Background: While the number of reviews of nursing education research has increased over the years, bibliometric studies about these reviews are limited.

Objectives: The purposes were to: (1) examine the number of reviews of nursing education research published from 2018 through 2022, (2) identify journals publishing these reviews, (3) identify the types and topics of reviews in nursing education, and (4) analyze how these reviews are labeled (standard versus nonstandard).

Design: This was a bibliometric study of reviews in nursing education.

Methods: The search for reviews in nursing education was done using CINAHL Complete via the EBSCO host platform and was limited to articles published in peer reviewed journals. The results were imported into EndNote, and the title or abstract was used to identify the review type. The categorized reviews were then exported into Microsoft Excel. The titles and abstracts were searched to identify reviews in nursing education, resulting in 600 articles analyzed in this study. The topics of the reviews were identified via natural language processing techniques based on the Medical Subject Headings biomedical vocabulary in the manual tags with each article.

Results: The number of reviews has steadily increased over the years. The top journal in which reviews were published was Nurse Education Today (n = 197). Nearly a quarter (n = 149, 24.8 %) of the reviews were integrative, followed by systematic (n = 117, 19.5 %), scoping (n = 117, 19.5 %), and literature (n = 85, 14.2 %). There were 12 main topics: most reviews were on simulation, followed by critical thinking methods and the academic achievement of nursing students.

Conclusion: This study documented an increase in the number of reviews of nursing education research over the last five years. The most common type was an integrative review, followed by systematic, scoping, and literature. Reviews on simulation were most common.