Psychological Empowerment in Nursing Research: Identifying Research Gaps Using Bibliometric Analysis

Objective: This study was performed to identify research gaps related to psychological empowerment in nursing research using bibliometric analysis. Methods: Descriptive and bibliometric analyses were employed. The study universe included 118 articles on nurse psychological empowerment in the Web of Science (WoS) database. The SALSA method was used in the data selection process. Data analysis and visualization were performed using the Bibliometrix Package in R software and VOSviewer. Results: Articles published by 345 authors in 42 different sources between 1997 and 2022 were reached. The distribution of articles to journals didn’t follow Bradford's Law, while author productivity didn’t follow Lotka's Law. The most commonly used author keywords were "psychological empowerment," "empowerment," "nurses," "structural empowerment," "job satisfaction," "nursing," and "organizational commitment," while recent popular author keywords include "COVID-19," "nursing education," and "nurse administrators." Conclusion: The literature on nurse psychological empowerment is limited. Literature has focused more on organizational outcomes and has had a managerial perspective. This research has revealed a gap in the literature on patient outcomes, care quality, and empowerment strategies or interventions.