Death Anxiety and Attitudes Toward Death in Nursing and Palliative Care: A Bibliometric Analysis

This bibliometric study maps the literature on death anxiety and attitudes toward death in nursing and palliative care, in which palliative care nurses are the focal population. In total, 267 articles and reviews indexed in the Web of Science Core Collection Nursing category (1995 to July 10, 2026; 2026 is a partial year) were analyzed using keyword co-occurrence and overlay analysis in VOSviewer. Annual output rose after 2021 and peaked in 2025 ( n = 36); the documents received 4,817 citations. The most frequent keywords were “death anxiety” ( n = 43) and “attitude to death” ( n = 37), and ten clusters formed three axes: death/palliative care, death anxiety–spirituality, and education/care planning. Coping-related keywords appeared earlier on average, whereas spirituality-, meaning-, and death education–related keywords appeared more recently, indicating shifts in research attention rather than in clinical practice. Spiritual care competence and resilience emerge as priorities for nursing education research.