Pedro Miguel Carrapato, nurse coordinator of the surgical area and the service of intensive medicine at Hospital Beatriz Ângelo (HBA), concluded, on November 16, his doctorate degree in Public Administration (specialty of Health Administration), at the Superior Institute of Social and Political Sciences (ISCSP), Universidade de Lisboa. He is the first nurse in HBA team to conclude a doctorate degree. In his thesis, gaining the unanimous approval of the doctorate jury, Pedro Miguel Carrapato researched “The influence of social responsibility in hospital governance – the perception of collaborators as evidence”. The jury, presided by António de Sousa Lara, integrated João Catarino, Fernanda Nogueira, Pedro Correia (the doctoral thesis advisor) and José Luís Nascimento, all from ISCSP, besides Sofia Portela, from ISCTE Business School, and Sulivan Desirée Fischer, from the Centre of Management and Socioeconomic Sciences, Universidade do Estado de Santa Catarina (Brazil). Conclusions of the investigation developed by Pedro Miguel Carrapato On the whole, the hospital collaborators included in the sample of the study (21 hospitals, hospital centres, public and private) consider that: In order to improve hospital governance, there should be an investment in areas such as resources and structure, institutional environment, independency/autonomy and performance (in this order of importance). The area of social responsibility, although highly important in hospital governance, occupies a level of low priority in comparison with the aforesaid areas. There are certain aspects of high importance that require a stronger investment at the level of hospital governance, such as: opportunities for health professionals to update knowledge; allocation of human resources in hospitals in the appropriate number to needs; adjustment of human and technological resources to the health needs of the population; cooperation agreements between different health institutions to exchange information and share experiences; effective contribution of the already existing evaluation systems (SINAS and Benchmarking Analysis, IAmetrics) for the evaluation of hospital quality performance; provision of better health conditions and safety at work for health professionals, besides wages compatible with the responsibility of the positions exercised.
