At 33, Francisco Sampaio is an integrated doctorate researcher at CINTESIS – Center for Health Technology and Services Research, working in the research group NursID – Innovation & Development in Nursing. He started early in Science and soon began to be noticed in scientific journals and the media with the results of his work, especially during the last year with the analysis of the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on Portuguese nurses’ mental health.

His life story began at the São João Hospital, where he first saw the light of day. He lived in São Mamede de Infesta until he was six, and then moved with his mother to Senhora da Hora, also in Matosinhos, where he studied. He was a teenager when he dreamed of becoming a teacher. Not just any teacher. He would be a teacher of Portuguese Language.

“Even today, when I correct papers, I pay a lot of attention to language issues. Even as a nurse, in care documentation, I was always very attentive to those issues. I also always read a lot, from a young age. Today, unfortunately, I have little time to dedicate to non-scientific literature, such as novels, which I leave to read mostly on vacation,” he says.

The desire to follow a career with more guarantees of employability, together with his family’s encouragement in this direction, led him to the area of Science and Technology. He became interested in Health in high school. He even thought about becoming a doctor (more specifically, a psychiatrist, since he has always been interested in understanding how the mind works), but he never applied. If he had, he would have been left in the door by a few tenths of a percentage point. The alternative was obvious: Nursing. He entered the Nursing School D. Ana Guedes, currently Nursing School of Porto (ESEP), in 2006, and finished his degree in 2010.

“I liked the course and the classmates. I realized that, in Nursing, I could also follow the area of Mental Health. Right in the first year of studies, it was clear to me that that would be my area. When I did my internship at the Magalhães Lemos Hospital, this option became even more evident,” he recalls.

He considered emigrating, as many of his colleagues did, at a time of great economic crisis and lack of jobs. He decided to first take his Master’s in Mental Health and Psychiatric Nursing, also at the ESEP, and wait to make a decision. They say luck protects the bold and Francisco Sampaio was bold. While he studied and worked as a nurse, especially at home, he did not stop sending out resumes. The Braga Hospital called him for an interview. He did not stay right away, but he did not give up, and, in November 2011, he was already working at the Psychiatric Service, where he remained until 2018.

“I remember I was taking a class, in the second year of my Master’s degree, when they called me to ask if I was still interested in Psychiatry because there was an opening in the Psychiatry Service, precisely where I wanted to work. In November of that year, I moved to Braga and was there until October 2018,” he recalls.

It was during the Ph.D. Program in Nursing Sciences at the University of Porto that he joined CINTESIS – Center for Health Technology and Services Research, as a researcher, recommended by Carlos Sequeira, his MSc and Ph.D. supervisor and coordinator of the NursID group, to which he belongs.

“The experience at CINTESIS has been frankly positive. CINTESIS gives us two very important things: the first is the possibility to apply for competitive funding. It is practically impossible to get funding if you are not integrated into a research unit. Secondly, the fact that it is a multidisciplinary research center makes it easier for us to have access to professionals from other areas. In Health, multidisciplinarity is essential, especially when applying for funding,” he explains.

His first research at CINTESIS was during his Ph.D., with the development and assessment of the effectiveness of a psychotherapeutic intervention model in Nursing, specifically in the field of the Nursing diagnosis “anxiety”. Modesty aside, the researcher stresses the importance of this model, since it would serve as the basis for many investigations developed later. It was a milestone, the first stone for the creation of a new line of research.

After completing his PhD (2018), he moved on to a Post-Doctoral Program at CINTESIS/Faculty of Medicine of the University of Porto (FMUP), which was completed this year, and continued his research, with emphasis on the creation of a clinical data model, also focused on Nursing and anxiety. The goal was to develop a model that could be integrated into Nursing information systems and that would facilitate the documentation of care by nurses. Francisco Sampaio highlights the contribution of this work to the development of a “Nursing Ontology” which is intended to be based on scientific evidence.

In parallel, and after four years (2014 and 2018) as Guest Assistant at ESEP, the opportunity arose to dedicate himself more to teaching, at Fernando Pessoa University. Once again, it was after a spontaneous application.

“Teaching has always captivated me. Teachers can make a big difference, not only in the lives of students but in the profession itself. I had good teachers who were an inspiration, whom I looked up to, and thought that one day I would like to be like them. My opinion is that nurses should not totally abandon the clinical practice. However, knowing that this was not possible, I had to abandon clinical practice to dedicate myself full time to teaching”, he justifies.

As early as March 2020, he realized the relevance of studying the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on the mental health of nurses, and began to collect data and analyze them, in collaborations with colleagues from CINTESIS, in particular Carlos Sequeira and mathematician Laetitia Teixeira. The results of the final work have been widely disseminated in the media. The possibility of evaluating the occurrence of post-traumatic stress in these health professionals in the future is still open.

“Nevertheless, there seems to have been some adaptation. Currently, the anxiety and stress levels of nurses are not comparable to those at the beginning of the pandemic. But it is also clear that the pandemic left its mark on many people, namely nurses, who by experiencing high levels of anxiety and stress suffered some disturbance in their mental health that they would not have suffered if they had not gone through that experience. We need to continue to pay attention to the mental health of these people”, he appeals.

On the other hand, Francisco Sampaio believes that nurses may have a crucial role to play, both in the post-pandemic community, through the early identification of pathological symptoms that require intervention or referral, and in the context of school health.

“In Portugal, we have a very serious problem of lack of mental health literacy. It is easier to teach a child than to teach an adult. Therefore, the nurses who are specialists in mental health and work in school health have a very important role in increasing mental health literacy so that these children grow up, they can understand when something is not right, with them or with someone else, and seek help, without the stigma that still exists.”

Currently, in addition to being a researcher at CINTESIS and an Assistant Professor at the Fernando Pessoa School of Health, Francisco Sampaio is an associate editor of the Portuguese Journal of Mental Health Nursing, editor of the BMC Nursing, and Chair of the Portuguese College of Mental Health and Psychiatric Nursing Specialty of the Order of Nurses (2020-2023). He has published over 30 books and book chapters, with several awards and scientific articles in national and international journals.

1-Year Ambition

The main goal will be to invest in competitive funding applications to consolidate some of our projects within NursID, namely in Mental Health.

10-Year ambition

I have learned not to make too many long-term plans. Our ambitions depend a lot on our context and circumstances, and these vary a lot over time. Generally speaking, I would like to internationalize my research to perform mobility/exchanges and collaborate with teams from other countries. I have collaborated a lot with colleagues from Spain and Brazil, but I would like to collaborate with other Anglo-Saxon countries. My areas of interest continue to be intervention models, taxonomies, and, more recently, personalized or individualized care, in a logic of user-centered intervention. In Portugal, care is still very standardized, and little voice is given to the users, in the sense of choosing, when properly informed, what is best for them. In Mental Health, this difficulty in negotiating with the patient is felt even more. This is an area I would like to explore further in the future. Above all, I would like my research to be useful for improving people’s quality of life because only then will it make sense.

Life Beyond Research

I really like Sports (both playing and watching). I have been playing tennis for several years. I am federated, but I have little time to go to tournaments. This is my most inviolable occupation. I play tennis three times a week and, unless something extremely important comes up, I never miss it. Sports are very important for my mental health. It is a good getaway for me to maintain some stability. I also love listening to music, especially older music. My favorite band is probably Pink Floyd. I like going to concerts and going to the movies.
I look forward to the pandemic ending so that these cultural activities can return in full.