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

Abstract

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.