Geographical Distribution of Nurses in Portugal

Health services in Portugal currently face a number of limitations in terms of both budget and human resources. It is therefore particularly important that they have an adequate distribution of resources, according to the needs of the population. As far as the distribution of nurses in Portugal is concerned, there is very little literature available in Portugal that looks at and studies the distribution of nurses in Portugal and their respective motivations. It was therefore decided to carry out a study to assess the statistics on the distribution of nurses in Portugal at county level and in the years 2002 to 2010 obtained from the National Statistics Institute database, putting them into context with OECD countries. The distribution of the number of nurses at county level was assessed using the gini index, which shows the equity or inequity of the distribution of health professionals. After this evaluation, the OLS methodology will also be used, according to the static and dynamic model. The aim of this method is to verify the aspects that influence the distribution of nurses in 2002 and 2010.