| Sumario: | With changing patterns of disease and significant demographic shifts, governments and the nursing profession are examining how services can be delivered to pursue and deliver universal health coverage. Consequently, there have been considerable discussions on task shifting, sharing, and delegation. The purpose of this study was to identify underlying thematic structures of task shifting research, provide information on the most prolific authors, illuminate connections between peers, and map the general investigated themes and how they have changed over time. A mixed-method bibliographic analysis of the scholarship contributions of both the medical and nursing professions on task shifting was performed using bibliometrics. A total of 1,833 unique articles contributed to the corpus of literature with increased rates of scholarship on task shifting being associated with the publication of the declaration of Alma Ata and the World Health Report of 2006. Scholarship on the topic is widely dispersed globally and illustrates that groups of authors regularly collaborate on (a) the application of task shifting to populations/groups (both disease and condition oriented), (b) the various human resources for health and care intervention reform, (c) the underpinning regulatory changes and, (d) the pursuit of universal health coverage. This analysis identifies key areas of strength in the current literature and the role of regulation in the delivery and redistribution of responsibilities within nursing and across disciplines. Up until this point, the work on task shifting has given only limited consideration to the use of technology as a means of generating more comprehensive solution sets. The need to include technology solutions as part and parcel of future research studies should be pursued.
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