The Public Health Workforce in Portugal in 2019

Abstract

Abstract While the slogan of a fit for purpose workforce pushes us to consider qualitative aspects, there are still quantitative aspects that need further consideration. In some planning and forecast processes, greater quantitative detail should be considered. We use an example from Portugal to explore this matter in the Public Health workforce (PHW). In 2019, for the first time, all Public Health Units (PHU) were supposed to fill in a plan of action on a public online platform. This included some self-reported data on their PHW. We have used this data to explore which and how many professionals were available in each of the PHU, also having in mind their percentage of work hours dedicated to the PHU and their gender. For this analysis, we have used Microsoft Office Excel 365, R 3.6.1, RStudio 1.2.5033, and ArcMap 10.7.1. Of the 55 PHU in Portugal, 12 (21,8%) did not publish their Plan, 2 (3,6%) were released without being correctly filled, and 3 (5,4%) with substantial data regarding their human resources being incomplete. In total, the plans identified 220 public health medical specialists, 130 medical residents, 184 nurses, 136 secretaries, and 314 other professionals. From the reported data, there was an average of the percentage of week hours dedicated to the PHU of 82,8% for medical specialists, 71,8% for nurses, 89,8% for secretaries, and 92,1% for other professionals. In what concerns gender distribution, women represented 60,9% of medical specialists, but only 52,6% of PHU coordinators, 55,5% of medical residents, 86,4% of nurses, 83,7% of secretaries, and 77,7% of the remaining professionals. There were considerable differences between PHU in these results. These results might differ from formal administrative data. However, due to being reported from the PHU themselves might portrait a more realistic picture of the local public health workforce. These results underline the importance of the hours dedicated to the PHU in the planning and forecasting of the PHW. Key messages The % of time PH professionals dedicate to their Unit should be included in Workforce planning. Greater adherence to the Portuguese public platform for action plans is needed.