Objective Based on evidence-based medicine systematic research and literature analysis methods, to make a quantitative and qualitative analysis on Chinese and No-Chinese literatures with subject of Medical Ethics. Concise and analyze the law and trends of subject development, to provide baseline data and decision-making reference for the relevant decision-making and follow-up study.
Method We analyzed keywords in medical ethics articles in PubMed and CNKI database, and developed subject charts, research field relationship charts, and strategy coordination charts using word co-occurrence, PFNET algorithms, and visualization methods.
Result Literatures collected from PubMed is six times than that from CNKI. Medical ethics research in China, starting later than abroad almost 35 years, is still at the preliminary stage of development. Eight matured research fields are formed as Morals, Ethical review, Physician-Patient relations, clinical trial, euthanasia, medical ethics education, clinical ethics, and health policy outside of China. Comparatively, in China there are only five fields are developed such as Morals, Physician-Patient relations, medical ethics education, bioethics, and medical research.
Conclusion Foreign countries more focus on how to employ medical ethics to solve new problems occurred in clinics and medical research, with morals, ethical review, and Physician-Patient relations as the center of research net. Researchers in China pay more attentions on morals and education with morals as the only research net center. So an urgent need is called to make a transition from simply moral research into applied research stressing on both moral education and ethic review.
Citation： IANG Lanhui,SHEN Jiantong,LI Youping,DENG Shaolin,WU Taixiang,CHEN Baoqing,XIE Zhiyi,QIN Chaoyi,YU Zhiyuan,QIN Chuan,HUANG Jin,LIU Xuemei,LI Yan,JIANG Jie. Medical Ethics: Subject, Function, and Trends:A Comparative Study of Medical Ethics in Chinese and English Bibliometric. Chinese Journal of Evidence-Based Medicine, 2012, 12(5): 542-549. doi: 10.7507/1672-2531.20120088 Copy