Abstract

Patient safety is a priority in health care centers, where the nursing professional's focus is on direct patient care without the intention of committing adverse events, committing to focused and safe care free of incidents, but these can be modified if there is no culture of quality care. A descriptive bibliometric study was carried out in the Scopus database, in publications between January 2000 and December 2020; with the aim of characterizing the scientific production on patient safety in the area of Nursing in Latin America. A total of 939 documents were recovered. The scientific production had a marked growth after 2007, 97.8 of the documents were citable documents, the language with the highest number of articles and citations per document was English with 872 documents and 16.3 citations per document respectively. A significant positive correlation was found between the indicators of collaboration and scientific visibility. It is concluded that Latin American scientific production on patient safety in the nursing area is characterized by a tendency towards growth in volume, with a marked decrease in scientific impact. High producers such as Brazil and Mexico stand out, however, there is a low Latin American scientific leadership, highlighting the need to strengthen research in this thematic area in the region, as a way of recognizing the importance of safe and quality care as a basis for nursing practice.