Aim: To analyse the current scientific knowledge and research lines focused on environmentally sustainable health systems, including the role of nurses.
Background: There seem to be differences between creating interventions focused on environmentally sustainable health systems, including nurses, and the scarcity of research on this topic, framed on the Sustainable Development Goals.
Methods: A bibliometric analysis was carried out, via three databases (Web of Science, Scopus and Pubmed), and the guideline recommendations were followed to select bibliometric data.
Results: The search resulted in 159 publications, significantly increasing the trends from 2017 to 2021 (p = .028). The most relevant countries in this area were the United States, the United Kingdom and Sweden. Also, the top articles were from relevant journals, indexed in Journal Citation Report, and the first and the second quartiles linked to the nursing field and citations (p < .001).
Conclusion: Education is key to achieving environmentally sustainable health systems via institutions and policies.
Implications for nursing management: There is a lack of experimental data and policies on achieving or maintaining environmentally sustainable health care systems, indicating that nurses have an important role and should be consulted and included in decision-making policies regarding sustainability in the health care systems.
Keywords: bibliometrics; environment; environmental research; global health; health research policy; nursing.
© 2022 The Authors. Journal of Nursing Management published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.