Analysis and review of research in the field of medical ethics in the international arena

Background and Objective: Syntax analysis is a reliable method for discovering relationships and revealing connections between different scientific fields and visualizing the intellectual structure of a scientific discipline. This study attempts to study the intellectual structure of knowledge in medical ethics research using the technique of synonymy. Materials and Methods: The research method of the present study is descriptive-analytical, which analyzes the content of the text with a scientometric approach. The research community includes 3296 records in the field of medical ethics in the Web of Science database for the period 1998-2018. Findings: The findings showed that in terms of frequency, the key terms bioethics and informed consent had the highest frequency in medical ethics studies. The findings related to hierarchical clustering led to the formation of 9 clusters in this area, with the clusters of futility in medicine, informed consent, and medical education with a clinical ethics approach being in the best strategic position. Ethical considerations: Honesty and trustworthiness in the selection of articles, reporting, and citation of the text have been observed. Conclusion: The present study showed that the analysis of synonyms and clustering can help to understand the structure of thematic relations in a field. The results of the analysis of the strategy diagram showed that “informed consent”, “medical education with an ethical approach” and “nonsense in medicine” are the central clusters. In contrast, the four clusters “Doctor-Patient Relationship”, “Ethics in Medical Research”, “Medical Profession and Ethics” and “Easy Death” are emerging or declining clusters. Research is felt in some discussions and concepts such as abortion, simulation, sterilization and its vacuum.