Evidence‐based nursing outputs and hot spot analysis of the last 5 years in mainland China: Results of a bibliometric analysis

Abstract Background Evidence‐based nursing has been highlighted and highly developed in recent decades in mainland China. Nevertheless, little is known about its overall development. Aims To gain insights on the overall development of evidence‐based nursing in the most recent 5 years and to inform future evidence‐based nursing research in mainland China. Method Four Chinese and four English databases were searched with the search terms “evidence‐based practice,” “nurse or nursing,” and “China or Chinese” from 2012 to 2016. Bibliometric and co‐word cluster analysis were conducted with the final included publications. Results A total of 9036 papers published by 13 808 authors in 606 journals were included. Publication numbers were increasing. None of the top ten journals publishing evidence‐based nursing papers were core nursing journals. The research hot spots on evidence‐based nursing in the recent five years were cardiovascular disease, mental health, and complication prevention. However, little attention has been paid to education for evidence‐based nursing. Conclusion Evidence‐based nursing has penetrated into various nursing branches in mainland China and become a well‐recognized and relatively mature research domain. More importance should be attached to the study design, methodological, and reporting quality of evidence‐based nursing projects.