To explore the current status and hot trends of geriatric nursing in China in the past five years, in order to provide a reference for related research.

This research adopted the bibliometric research method. The Wanfang database, China National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI) , and China Biomedical Literature Database were searched on October 30, 2020, and bibliometric analysis was carried out based on the literature related to geriatric nursing published from 2016 to 2020.

A total of 4 930 papers included were published in 359 journals. The cumulative number of papers published in the top 15 journals exceeded 50%, and one third of them were non-nursing journals. The number of papers published in the region where the first author of the paper was located was from 1 to 555, and the top 3 regions were Beijing, Jiangsu, and Guangdong respectively. Research hotspots were mainly concentrated in five areas, namely, common clinical problem nursing in elderly patients, geriatric nursing services in institutions and communities, quality of life and psychological nursing, chronic disease management, and safety risk management.

In the past five years, geriatric nursing research has been large in volume and published in journals. The research attention of different cities is quite different, and the research field is continuously expanding, which is in line with the background of my country's population aging and the guiding direction of national policies.

Aged; Geriatric nursing; Research hotspots; Bibliometrics; Visual analysis