Objective This study aims to assess the status and development trends of nursing humanities education literature， and to consider the changing perspective of nursing humanities education. Methods The literature on nursing humanities education in the CNKI and Web of Science databases was taken as the object. Keyword clustering and development trend analysis of Chinese and English literature were conducted using VOSviewer and Pajek. Results According to the clustering results，high-quality of humanistic nursing and nursing talent cultivation were the common themes of Chinese and English literature on nursing humanistic education，while their focuses were different. From the development trends，the focus areas in both the English and Chinese literature were dispersed before 2010. After 2010，the scope gradually broadened and the focus began to converge，but the breadth and depth of research in English and Chinese literature were different. The English literature had a broader perspective，expanded into areas such as “heath care”“palliative care”“public health”，but with a shorter time span；the Chinese literature was still largely oriented towards “disease” and was basically limited to medical humanities. Conclusion Nursing humanities education faces new problems and challenges. The perspective should be expanded to health humanities and one-health humanities，which depends on the continuous deepening of nursing humanities education reform.