BIBLIOMETRIC ANALYSIS OF CLINICAL LEADERSHIP STUDIES: TRENDS AND INSIGHTS FROM THE WEB OF SCIENCE

Clinical leaders play a significant role in fostering collaboration among health professionals, effective communication and developing strategies for improving patient care. As a result, the number of studies related to clinical leadership has been increasing over time. However, the themes addressed in these studies and their temporal changes are not clear. Therefore, this study aims to examine the topics discussed in clinical leadership literature and the changes in these topics over time. To achieve the objectives of the study, research studies in the Web of Science were subjected to bibliometric analysis. The analyses were conducted using the bibliometrix in RStudio. The study revealed that research on clinical leadership has accelerated and increased since 2000s, and the countries contributing the most to literature are the United States, China, the United Kingdom and Australia. It was also found that some concepts such as autonomy were mostly discussed up until the 1980s, while recently clinical leadership has been more associated with engagement and improvement. The group most frequently involved in such studies were nurses. It is believed that the findings of this study provide a comprehensive summary of clinical leadership literature and offer detailed information on the subject to stakeholders.