Analysis of research hotspots and visualizations of nurses' professional quality of life

Objective: To explore which key countries, institutions, and authors have conducted professional quality of life research for nurses and further explore the collaborative networks and elements of cooperation between them. In addition, co-occurrence analysis was used to identify influential countries, institutions, and authors. Keyword frequency analysis, co-occurrence analysis, keyword clustering analysis, and visual representation were used to analyze the current status, hotspots, and trends of research in this field, and predict future research directions. Methods: The data source of the literature related to nurses’ professional quality of life (ProQOL) in the Web of Science Core Collection (WoSCC) database over the past ten years was analyzed using Excel and CiteSpace version 6.2 R2 analysis tools for the number of publications, institutions, countries, keywords, literature co-citation, and clustering. Results: Screening within the search to include 181 pieces of literature related to nurses’ ProQOL revealed that the overall volume of publications is a fluctuating growth trend, mainly in the United States, China, and other countries, and the key institutions are Chung Ang University and Sichuan University. According to the cluster analysis presenting ten clusters, the research hotspots of the study in the past decade were mainly compassionate fatigue, compassionate satisfaction, and secondary trauma response. Conclusion: The future direction of research on nurses’ professional quality of life may be to explore the balance between compassion fatigue (CF) and compassion satisfaction (CS), and the relevant influences and interventions on professional quality of life.