Research trends in readiness for hospital discharge between 2002 and 2021: A bibliometric analysis.
Rong Zhang, Dongmei Wang, Ling Zhu and 6 others
PMID 37775985WHAT IT FOUND
Research on discharge readiness is dominated by nursing and anaesthesia.
The USA leads publication volume. Recent trends focus on individualized teaching, communication, and health literacy, particularly for infants and parents.
Key findings
01Nursing is the most represented research area in discharge readiness studies, accounting for 25.20% of publications.
02The United States contributed more than half of the publications in this field, followed by Canada and Australia.
03Emerging research frontiers identified through keyword bursts include individualized discharge teaching, communication, health literacy, and care for infants and parents.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for RNs
Read the rest of this summary
You get three full summaries a month, free, and we do not ask for a card. Search, the TL;DRs and your library stay unlimited either way.
What it does not show
The analysis was restricted to English-language articles and reviews in the Web of Science database, potentially missing relevant studies in other languages or databases like PubMed or Scopus. Bibliometric analyses rely on citation counts, which may bias results toward older, highly cited papers and underrepresent recent, potentially innovative work that has not yet accumulated citations. This is a descriptive analysis of literature trends, not a systematic review of clinical evidence. It does not synthesize findings on the effectiveness of discharge interventions.
Declared interests
The authors declared no financial conflicts of interest. The work was supported by the Natural Science Foundation of Hubei Province in China.
The easy way to misread this
Do not interpret this as a review of clinical evidence for discharge planning. It is a bibliometric analysis that counts publications and citations. It does not tell you which discharge interventions work, only what topics researchers are writing about.