Introduction
Information communication technology (ICT) is developing rapidly and it is
incorporated in practically all health care professional and research fields. Main focus
of the ICT employment is to build nursing information systems for better support of
modern nursing, its implementation and in finding key issues for its use of the
implementation and standard-based practice which can improve clinical and
management nursing functions and patient safety [1]. Skiba, Blažun, Ehrenberg et al.
on the post conference of NI 2009 defined and pointed out some main issues regarding
personal health information management systems and how to prepare nurses to practice
in a wired world[2]. But in spite of all those efforts and facts we can still notice that
nursing informatics competencies had received limited attention in basic nursing
education curricula in Europe and especially in Eastern European countries. On the
other hand nursing informatics is a specialty recognized by the American Nursing
Association more than 12 years ago; additionally in Canada in 2011, competence and
performance indicators were revised with the aim to include nursing informatics [3],
indeed 636 biomedical and health informatics courses are offered just in United States[4]. Nevertheless, findings within literature review search by using the terms
"informatics competencies" and "nursing informatics competencies" in databases
PubMeb and CINAHL (37 articles captured, 6 relevant) revealed that there is a major
variation among published informatics competencies in regard to content, presentation,
and audience. Even more, the literature review showed that a general list of
competencies which could be utilized by nurses, at all levels of engagement is needed
[5]. In addition, the results of a recent study show that, even if nursing students feel
competent using informatics in nursing, they still lack important resources for
developing ICT competencies [6]. A more specific study focused on nursing leaders
defined a list of 92 competencies needed by nursing leaders (24 addressed computer
skills, 40 informatics knowledge, and 28 informatics skills) [7]. Thereafter it is clear
that inclusion of nursing informatics competencies into basic nursing curricula,
assessment of nursing informatics skills, lists of needed competencies and the research
differs largely between countries, institutions and researchers, thus we performed a
bibliometrics study to analyze the intensity and diffusion of research in this area.
While numerous bibliometric studies have been conducted in various fields,surprisingly few have been done on the nursing literature and none on nursing
informatics competencies. However, much can be learned about nursing and their
specialty areas by analyzing published articles and their citation records. Bibliometrics
is defined as a quantitative analysis of the bibliographic features of a body of literature
and is based on the assumption that most scientific discoveries and research results
eventually are published in international scientific journals [8]. Bibliometrics
techniques applied to nursing literature could reveal much of how research is
performed and communicated to nurses [9, 10]. Bibliometric assessments are based on
the assumption that most scientific discoveries and research results eventually are
published in international scientific journals where they can be read and cited by other
researchers [11]. The purpose of bibliometrics is to map the literary production in a
given field and to determine the structure of a field of study. It uses quantitative
methods to analyze books, journals, conference papers and other publications. Using
this analysis researchers can identify patterns in the literature like most prolific authors,
institutions, countries and journals in a selected field, types of works cited, the rates of
literary production over time, the patterns of communication and collaboration of
authors [12]. Bibliometric studies are used also to examine the history and structure of
a field, the flow of information into a field, the growth of the literature, patterns of
collaboration among scientists, impact of a journal, and long term citation impact of the
work [13].