Palliative care and nursing in dissertations and theses in Portugal: a bibliometric study

Tendency and foci of nurse practitioners: bibliometric analysis based on the CiteSpaceV†

Objective

Nurse practitioners (NPs) have drawn significant attention recently and played a major role in healthcare. We aim to find the evaluation of NPs through published studies and then visualize the research status and hotspots in this field.

Methods

All data came from the Web of Science Core Collection, and the data were counted and entered into Excel 2016. The key documents nodes were excavated by analyzing the knowledge network map using CiteSpaceV software. In this study, these nodes of “author, country, institution, keyword, co-citation (reference\cited-author\cited-journal), and grant” were harvested for analysis and comparison.

Results

A total of 4912 records, which were published between 2007 and 2018 and pertained to NPs, were retrieved from the Web of Science Core Collection database (WoSCC) from a diversity of languages. The total and the annual number of publications and citations of these continually increased over time. Most publications were in 2018 (618 records). This study involved 8241 authors located in 98 countries and 4557 institutions totally. The United States (2737 records) and the University of Michigan (90 records) dominated in publication frequency. There are 902 journals and 2449 articles with funding support that have been analyzed. Most articles were from JAMA: The Journal of the American Medical Association (1386, IF = 47.661), followed by the Journal of Advanced Nursing (1359, IF = 2.267), and The New England Journal of Medicine (1109, IF = 79.258). The reference “The Role of Nurse Practitioners in Reinventing Primary Care” was co-cited most frequently, which revealed it as the highest landmark article in NP. The top-ranked keyword was “Care,” other than “Nurse practitioner,” which has an ultra-high frequency. Some of the high-frequency keywords represent the significant direction of NPs.

Conclusions

NPs are at the crux of health-care delivery and play an important role in providing high-quality nursing. Publications on NPs in WoSCC have increased notably during the recent years, and have appeared in some journals that have a high impact factor. Research frontiers and developmental trends were revealed by the analysis in this study, which can be used to forecast future research developments in NPs and taken as a reference to choose the right directions by subsequent researchers who wish to use these results. However, the grant support from administration or research institutions is still in need of improvement and the scope of research in NPs should be broadened in the future.

How does nursing research differ internationally? A bibliometric analysis of six countries

BACKGROUND

International nursing research comparisons can give a new perspective on a nation's output by identifying strengths and weaknesses.

AIM

This article compares strengths in nursing research between six mainly English-speaking nations (Australia, Canada, Ireland, New Zealand, United Kingdom and United States).

METHODS

Journal authorship (percentage of first authorship by nationality) and article keywords were compared for Scopus-indexed journal articles 2008-2018. Three natural language processing strategies were assessed for identifying statistically significant international differences in the use of keywords or phrases.

RESULTS

Journal author nationality was not a good indicator of international differences in research specialisms, but keyword and phrase differences were more promising especially if both are used. For this, the part of speech tagging and lemmatisation text processing strategies were helpful but not named entity recognition. The results highlight aspects of nursing research that were absent in some countries, such as papers about nursing administration and management.

CONCLUSION

Researchers outside the United States should consider the importance of researching specific patient groups, diseases, treatments, skills, research methods and social perspectives for unresearched gaps with national relevance. From a methods perspective, keyword and phrase differences are useful to reveal international differences in nursing research topics.

Review and Characterization of Portuguese Theses, Dissertations, and Papers about Spirituality in Health

Research about spirituality has grown widely in the past decades and the interest in health care is also evident in Portugal. This literature review aims to identify and to characterize Portuguese theses, dissertations, and papers about spirituality in health, and to provide a systematic overview of the knowledge concerning this subject. The search was conducted in February 2017 and updated in January 2018. Four independent reviewers screened and analyzed all citations, and a total of 76 results were included. Publications started in 2002 and include master degree dissertations (n = 37), scientific papers (n = 31), and PhD theses (n = 8). Papers were published in 24 national and international journals. Most papers were psychology- and nursing-related and had a quantitative design (n = 55). Samples were mostly composed of patients living with a chronic disease (n = 20) or elderly (n = 11). The Spiritual Well-Being Questionnaire (SWBQ) was the most used tool. A multidisciplinary approach is regarded as foundational in implementing spirituality in the provision of health care and the results underline the interest on this topic from other disciplines rather than nursing. Further studies must provide a deeper understanding of spirituality in children, adolescents or families’ perspective bringing new insights to advanced health practice.

Academic Palliative Care Research in Portugal: Are We on the Right Track?

BACKGROUND

The narrow link between practice, education, and research is essential to palliative care development. In Portugal, academic postgraduate publications are the main booster for palliative care research.

METHODS

This is a bibliometric study that aims to identify Portuguese palliative care postgraduate academic work published in electronic academic repositories between 2000 and 2015.

RESULTS

488 publications were identified. The number of publications has increased, especially in the last five years. The most frequently used method was quantitative, healthcare professionals were the most studied participants, and psychological and psychiatric aspects of care comprised the most current theme. Practice-based priorities are financial costs and benefits of palliative care, awareness and understanding of palliative care, underserved populations, best practices, communication, and palliative care in nonhospital settings.

CONCLUSION

The number of palliative care postgraduate academic publications has increased in Portugal in the past few years. There is academic production in the eight domains of quality palliative care and on the three levels of recommendation for practice-based research priorities. The major research gaps in Portugal are at the system and societal context levels.

ANÁLISE E AVALIAÇÃO DA TEORIA FINAL DE VIDA PACÍFICO SEGUNDO CRITÉRIOS DE FAWCETT

RESUMO Objetivo: avaliar a Teoria do Final de Vida Pacífico, seguindo um quadro de avaliação de teorias de enfermagem. Método: reflexão desenvolvida por meio da investigação da Teoria do Final de Vida Pacífico e sua aplicação na prática de enfermagem em Cuidados Paliativos, utilizando o quadro de análise e avaliação proposto por Jacqueline Fawcett. A análise envolveu um exame imparcial e detalhado da teoria, incluindo escopo, contexto e conteúdo da Teoria; e a avaliação baseou-se nos critérios de significância, consistência interna, parcimônia, testabilidade, adequação empírica e adequação pragmática. Resultados: quanto ao escopo, é considerada uma teoria de médio alcance e preditiva, tem seu contexto baseado na Teoria do Conforto de Katharine Kocalba. No conteúdo apresenta conceitos definidos, bem delimitados e inter-relacionados. Tem significância ao definir, explicitamente, os conceitos do metaparadigma; tem consistência interna ao dar uma definição para cada conceito e utilizá-los sem apresentar contradição, é parcimoniosa podendo ser utilizada por enfermeiros direcionada aos pacientes em fase terminal. Conclusão: destaca-se a importância da teoria e sua aplicação na atuação de enfermeiros voltada ao cuidado de indivíduos em final de vida e seus familiares, visto que apresenta conceitos e proposições condizentes com àquelas propostas pelos Cuidados Paliativos.