Visual analytics of the psychological capital of nurses in China based on CiteSpace

Objective To sort out and analyze the current situation, hotspots, and trends of research on domestic nurse psychological capital and provide references for formulating targeted measures to improve the level of nurse psychological capital.

Methods A comprehensive search of the relevant research papers on nurses' psychological capital in the CNKI database(till March 31, 2023) and the CiteSpace software were used to co-occur and cluster the authors, institutions, keywords, and other indicators of the included literature.

Results From 2010 to 2023, a total of 449 articles were retrieved, and 381 articles were finally included for analysis. The number of articles published in this field has shown a trend of fluctuation over time. The high-frequency keywords were "psychological capital", "nurse", "occupational burnout", "influencing factors", "work engagement", "correlation", "turnover intention", etc., and the newer burst words were "mediating effect", etc. The research hotspots and frontiers were the current situation and influencing factors of nurses' psychological capital and the impact of psychological capital on work.

Conclusions The research on nurse psychological capital in China started late. Since psychological capital has an important impact on work, it is necessary to strengthen the investigation into the current situation and influencing factors of psychological capital and its impact on work. Relevant scholars should further strengthen cooperation among different teams from various institutions in different regions to realize cross-regional and cross-team research on nurses' psychological capital so as to improve the level of nurse psychological capital.