To explore the application situation and hotspots of the Q method in the field of nursing research and provide a reference for the nursing workers in China to learn and apply the Q method.

Literature retrieval was conducted based on Web of Science, and statistical analysis was conducted on the number of articles published, countries, journals, institutions, authors, highly cited papers, research directions and high-frequency co-occurrence words by using the analysis function of Web of Science and visual imaging of VOSviewer.

A total of 686 authors from 25 countries and 23 institutions published 326 papers in 157 journals applying the Q method in nursing research, showing an overall increasing trend. South Korea (12.27%) , the United States (7.98%) , the United Kingdom (7.06%) ranked the highest number of articles published, and China ranked the sixth (3.68%) The number of citations per article was the highest in the United Kingdom (33.78 times) , followed by Canada (19.67 times) . Psychology and health care were the most interdisciplinary subjects. The research hotspots expanded from methodological discussions to nursing education, clinical practice, psychological nursing and health promotion.

Q method is still in its infancy in the field of nursing in China and has not been widely promoted and practiced. China's publication volume and influence are relatively weak. In the future, international exchanges and cooperation should be expanded and academic frontiers and research hotspots should be grasped to improve the level and quality of research.

Nursing; Q method; Bibliometric analysis