Planning and Sizing of the Health Workforce in Brazil: advances and challenges

Abstract

This study aims to analyze the production of knowledge about Planning and Sizing of the Health  Workforce (PDFTS) developed in Brazil, identifying  models and methodologies that consider the Guidelines of the Unified Health System (SUS) for the  constitution of regionalized care networks. This is an  integrative review, including Brazilian studies and full  text, in Portuguese, and available in the CAPES, BVS  and Google Scholar databases. The searches returned  48,083 documents and, after selection with the  PRISMA strategy, 62 studies published between 2011  and 2020 were included. Most of the analyzed productions approach the PDFTS with comparative  analyzes between the estimated needs and the  current availability, being more frequent the studies of only one professional category, with emphasis on  nursing. The findings contribute to the debate on the  essentiality of the health workforce for the  conformation of networks, by demonstrating that the  calculation methods favor the use of indicators and  parameters related to the provision of services in  specific health facilities, especially hospitals, not  operationalizing aspects of regionalization and  systemic integration of the Health Care Network.