Abstract: Objective To analyze and compare the research trends and hotspots in medical humanities education from papers published in Chinese and English to provide references for in-depth research of medical humanities education in China. Methods Through reviewing literatures from database of CNKI, Wanfang, VIP and PubMed database,the papers related to medical humanities education were retrieved from January 1,2011 to December 31,2021. Bibliometric methods were used to analyze the trend of research, Co-occurrence of high-frequency Mesh/keywords, research hotspots, and then compared research hotspots as well as research orientations. Results A total of 3 028 English literatures and 1 837 Chinese literatures were reviewed. The establishment of a medical humanities curriculum system and the cultivation of a patient-centered medical humanistic spirit are common research hotspots in the researches published in Chinese and in English. Medical ethics covered by medical humanities education is found to be the core theme of researches published in English. Humanities education during the pandemic of COVID-19 is an emerging theme to the research on medical education in English-speaking countries. The research hotspot published in Chinese is humanities education for the trainees of standardized resident training program. More attention should be paid to the reformation of medical humanities courses and of training methods. Conclusions The research on medical humanities education in papers published in Chinese and in English are significantly different. Research on medical humanities curriculum development, the education of medical ethics and humanities for medical students during the pandemic begins earlier than that found in papers published in Chinese. The research content is more abundant than that found in Chinese papers. The result may redound to the researches in China.

Key words: Bibliometrics, Medical humanities education, Biclustering analysis, Comparative analysis, Chinese, English