Background Community traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) service is an important step in promoting the construction of Healthy China. There are abundant academic research results in the field of community TCM service in China, but there is a lack of collation of these research results. Systematically sorting out the relevant literature in the field of community TCM service by using the method of bibliometrics can provide a macroscopic understanding of the research progress and hotspots in this field and reference for future research.
Objective To sort out the hotspots and development trends of community TCM service research in China by using bibliometric methods.
Methods On May 2 in 2022, CNKI, Wanfang Data Knowledge Service Platform and VIP were searched for relevant research literature on community TCM service research in China from January 2000 to April 2022. By using CiteSpace software, the visual analysis of the co-occurrence of authors included in the literature, keywords co-occurrence, clustering, timeline distribution, and burst terms were performed and the relevant graphs were plotted.
Results A total of 1 440 papers were included, and the publication volume of community TCM services in China showed an overall increasing trend, with 75 papers (5.2%) published in 2000—2005, 382 papers (26.5%) in 2006—2011, and 983 papers (68.3%) in 2012—2022. The top three authors in the publication volume were Shi Yongxing (25 articles), Bao Yong (16 articles), and Liu Deng (14 articles). The top 5 high-frequency keywords in terms of centrality were "TCM" "Chinese medicine" "community" "general practitioner" and "general practice". The keyword clustering analysis formed 12 cluster labels, and the top three clusters by scale were "community" "TCM" and "general practitioner". The timeline distribution suggested that clusters such as "community" "TCM" "general practitioner" and "TCM nursing" were research hotspots in this field. From the perspective of burst terms, "family doctor" has the highest burst value (8.07), and "elderly people" "diabetes" "family doctor" "medical consortium" "general practice of TCM" and the "integrated medical care and elderly services" are future research directions.
Conclusion The current status of community TCM service in China, development of TCM general practitioners and community TCM nurses, and the improvement of TCM service capabilities of community health care institutions are research hotspots. In the future, more attention will be paid to the digital compact TCM medical consortium based on the Internet platform and the contracted family doctor service model with the participation of TCM general practitioners, so as to better utilize the characteristics and advantages of community TCM services in integrated medical care and elderly services.
