Research Trends in Patient Safety and Nursing : A Text Network Analysis and Topic Modeling

This study aimed to identify key research topics related to patient safety in Korean and international nursing literature through text network analysis. This study was conducted in four phases: collecting journal abstracts from previous studies, refining and extracting keywords from the abstracts, analyzing text networks and co-occurrence matrices of keywords, and examining network-related measures, including centrality analysis and topic modeling. A total of 458 Korean studies and 2,128 international studies published between 2017 and 2023 were selected for analysis. Data analysis was performed using NetMiner program. Centrality analysis revealed that the most frequently occurring keywords included ‘nurse,’‘patient,’‘care,’‘safety,’‘hospital,’‘error,’‘quality,’‘management,’‘practice,’‘culture,’‘student,’and‘health.’Topic modeling identified four key thematic areas: nurses’ patient safety quality improvement activities, nurses’ management of patient safety incidents, nursing students’ patient safety competency, and nurses’ patient safety culture. These findings highlight the central role of nurses in patient safety research and underscore the critical need for a robust patient safety culture in healthcare settings. The study concludes that empirical research on patient safety practices is vital and that integrating patient safety competencies into nursing education through continuous training programs is crucial. The results are expected to serve as foundational data for future research and policy development in patient safety.