Fengyan Song,1,2 Yuting Yang,1,2 Juan Xue1,3 

1Nursing Department, The Third Xiangya Hospital of Central South University, Hunan, People’s Republic of China; 2Xiangya School of Nursing, Central South University, Hunan, People’s Republic of China; 3Department of Outpatient, The Third Xiangya Hospital of Central South University, Hunan, People’s Republic of China

Correspondence: Juan Xue, Nursing Department, The Third Xiangya Hospital of Central South University, Department of Outpatient, The Third Xiangya Hospital of Central South University, Hunan, 410013, People’s Republic of China, Email juan_xue@outlook.com

Objective: This study aimed to examine the global scientific output of research on patient delay and explore the hotspots and frontiers from 2000 to 2023 through bibliometric analysis.
Methods: Publications regarding patient delay published from 2000 to 2023 were extracted from the Web of Science Core Collection (WOSCC). Subsequently, CiteSpace, VOSviewer, and Bibliometrix Online Analysis Platform were used to analyze publications, countries, institutions, authors, journals, and keywords.
Results: A total of 721 papers were included in the study. The publication output increased from 20 papers in 2000 to 64 papers in 2023, a remarkable 220.00% growth. The USA (138 papers) and University of California San Francisco (21 papers) were identified as the most productive country and institution, respectively. Moser (10 papers), and Dracup (10 papers) are the most productive authors. “BMC Public Health” (24 publications) is the most productive journal. “Patient Delay” was the most cited keyword, with high-frequency keywords such as “Prehospital Delay”, “Symptoms”, “Time”, “Care”, “Diagnosis”, “Acute Myocardial-infarction”, and “Mortality” signaling hot topics in Patient Delay.
Conclusion: There are increasingly many papers on patient delay. However, there has been limited development of cooperation between countries and institutions. In the future, collaboration between countries and institutions should be strengthened. In addition, 3 hotspots and 3 frontiers are summarized in this study to provide researchers with future research directions.

Keywords: patient delay, bibliometrics, VOSviewer, CiteSpace, hotspots, frontiers, web of science