Abstract:
Objective China's general practice health services and general practice education are developing rapidly. To summarize the relevant graduate theses of general practice through bibliometric analysis and clarify the research hotspots and trends, reflecting the existing problems, and providing reference for the selection of topics for future graduate students in General Medicine. Methods Graduate theses of general practice from 2013 to 2023 was searched for in the China National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI) and Wanfang Database. CiteSpace software was used to visually analyze the number of publications, degree type, institutions, keywords, etc. Results Ultimately 2 475 documents were included. There were relatively few graduate theses in general practice from 2013 to 2014, but it entered a rapid growth stage since 2015. A total of 105 universities participated in this study. There was a large gap in professional development among institutions, and there was little cooperation. According to the keyword visualization analysis, it was found that the top 10 high-frequency keywords were type 2 diabetes, risk factors, influencing factors, prognosis, the elderly, hypertension, clinical efficacy, meta-analysis, coronary heart disease, general practitioners; and diabetes mellitus, health management, and health education had the highest intermediary centrality; the keywords clustered together to form 9 modules, which could be focused on 4 topics, chronic disease management, epidemiology, clinical diagnosis and treatment, and discipline construction. The research hotspots kept changing from 2013 to 2023, and the keyword with the highest emergence intensity during this period was traditional Chinese medicine syndrome type. The research hotspot focused on diseases, but there were more explorations on the disease diagnosis and treatment; after 2018, insomnia, depression, health management and obesity became the most prominent keywords. Conclusion In recent years, the research hotspots of graduate theses in general medicine mainly focus on chronic disease management, epidemiology, clinical diagnosis and treatment and discipline construction, and insomnia, depression, health management and obesity may become the future research trend. However, there is still a big gap compared with domestic and international journals in the field of general medicine. Future research should have an international perspective, root general practice research in our grassroots and communities, promote the development of general practice and a healthy China.