Provision of physicians in primary health care in the state of Paraíba, Brazil, according to the More Doctors’ Program

Abstract

The provision of physicians has been the object of international discussions for decades, and the same is true for Brazil, where there is a situation of shortage and bad distribution of physicians. The present research had the aim of describing the profile of the physicians included in the ‘More Doctors’ Program (Programa Mais Médicos, in Portuguese). It is a quantitative, cross-sectional, descriptive study, followed by a case study with information from 272 questionnaires. The data were analyzed using the SPSS statistical software, version 22.0. The average age of the interviewees was 38.2 years, and 50.7% of them were female, 11% were in their first jobs, 51.1% had graduated between 1 and 5 years prior to the study, and 85% reported having experience working in primary health care. We observed that, with the implementation of the ‘More Doctors’ Program in the state of Paraíba, Northeastern Brazil, there was a change not only in the amount of doctors, but also in the number of job posts, in the number of physicians who go work on the countryside, and in the redistribution of these professionals. However, the results indicate that there still are 22 municipalities in Paraíba without physicians, and that 85.3% of the physicians included in the Program still did not have a specialist title. The conditions of access and the quality of the services provided still constitute a great challenge yet to be overcome.

primary health care; primary health care physicians; public health; health policy; area in need of medical care