Abstract: Objective  To analyze the dynamics and changing characteristics of medical cultural competence education and to provide theoretical and practical references for medical culture education in China. Methods  We searched the Web of Science core database with the keywords of “medicine,” “cultural competence,” and “education” and obtained a total of 1 521 journal articles from 1992 to 2021. CiteSpace was employed to visualize and analyze the chronological distribution, publications on core journals, keywords, emergent terms, and research frontiers and hotspots of the literature. Results   The number of papers published in the field of medical cultural competence education is steadily increasing. Developed Western countries contribute to the majority of the publications, especially America and Canada. Trending topics in the past five years are racial/ethnic culture and their differences. Compared with the research in Western countries, Chinese scholars are mainly interested in phenomenon description and case analysis but are inadequate in theoretical induction and exploration of local medical culture. Conclusion  The research on cultural competence cultivation in medical education is increasingly mature. We can learn from the teaching methods and research focus of highly cited papers in this field and explore how to cultivate medical cultural competence suitable for our country’s conditions.

Key words: cultural competence, medical education, visualization analysis, CiteSpace, research hotspots, research frontiers, development trends