Margarida Reis Santos é is an integrated researcher of the NursID group, at CINTESIS, in the Nursing School of Porto (ESEP), where she has worked for 36 years and currently holds the position of Coordinating Professor. Happy with her profession, which she considers addictive, she admits to be a "workaholic".

She was born and lived in Lisbon until she was seven when she moved with her family to Porto. As a child, she had no idea what she wanted to be professionally. Nursing happened "by chance". She enrolled in the Nursing program at the current School of Nursing of Santa Maria, and completed the degree in 1980. She also took an adventure in Psychology, for a year, but chose to stay in Nursing.

She worked as a nurse at the then São João Hospital, first in the Emergency Department, then in the Training Department. An accidental needlestick with an infected patient's needle dictated a change of duties. Until she applied for a vacancy to teach at ESEP, in 1987. She finished her specialty in Child Health and Pediatrics in 1992. She received her Master's and Ph.D. in Nursing Sciences from the Instituto de Ciências Biomédicas Abel Salazar and complementary training in different areas.

Margarida Reis Santos was part of the hard core of nine ESEP professors who integrated CINTESIS, establishing NursID, a research group focused on research and innovation in Nursing. The balance of these years is very positive. In her opinion, "research in Nursing is very important to have a practice that is based on credible evidence".

As a researcher, her main areas of interest include obesity in children and adolescents, pre-operative nursing intervention in adolescents, nurses' attitudes towards death, the perceptions of relatives of people with cancer, and the pre-hospital approach in trauma victims. Other fields of research include Clinical Management and Supervision in Nursing. Her most outstanding project at CINTESIS was, in fact, the project "Clinical Supervision and Quality of Professional Practice: Training, Management and Support".

She was one of the organizers of NursID 2023 - Spring School, which took place from May 8 to 12, having coordinated one of the 12 Thematic Seminars organized for the relevance of education, training, and research in each specific area. It was her responsibility to organize and coordinate the Seminar on Child Health and Pediatric Nursing, with about thirty participants. NursID 2023 gathered, this year, many students and researchers from ESEP and CINTESIS, but also from other institutions, who presented more than 80 papers, posters, oral communications, and pitches. In all, there were more than 600 participants.

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