Survey of Medical Ethics Research with the Science Drawing Method

Abstract

The advancement of human knowledge in the field of medical science has brought activists to the field with new ethical issues. addressing medical ethical issues is one of the essential requirements in the health system. at present, the evaluation of science production can provide a clear picture of the growth, progress and important issues of a scientific field. in this study, we aimed to identify important areas of research in the field of medical ethics through a scientometric study. This is a scientometrics research using one of the most important techniques of this method, namely, the drawing of science. the statistical population of the study consisted of 3333 scientific papers indexed in the WOS database by the end of 2019. a researcher-made checklist was used for data collection and Ravar-matrix and ucinet6 software were used for data analysis. The results showed that the amount of scientific output in the field of medical ethics is 3333, starting with 1946 with two documents and reaching 2019 with 104 documents. the average annual growth rate is 21.03%. the world of medical ethics consists of 9 clusters worldwide and the concepts of bioethics, ethical counseling, education, medical education and autonomy have been the most commonly used keywords in medical ethics research, respectively. Iranian products in this field also consist of 6 clusters which are the key concepts in medical ethics, bioethics, ethics committee, strategic planning and medical education.