Ted,
Interesting. There clearly is inadequate information!
As you say, one possibility is that they are (without defining it) using
the unit 'shift' to refer to the number of 'person-shifts' required to
staff a ward or whatever.
It is perhaps possible that (although this is certainly not clear from the
article) that the 10,933 nursing shifts are mentioned just as an _example_
of one type of use of agency staff by the hospital during the year in
question? Most hospitals make some use of staff from 'agencies' of one
sort or another across a wide range of disciplines (from cleaners to doctors).
Kind Regards,
John
At 10:33 14/06/2016 +0100, Ted Harding wrote:
>Greetings All!
>One must try to do one's best with the information one is provided with.
>So I have just done some basis Radical Statistics on a press report.
>I have divided one number by another, looked at the result, and raised
>my eyebrows (as one does).
>
>According to the East Anglian Daily Times this morning:
> http://tinyurl.com/hh53v4m
> "Ipswich Hospital spends £11m on agency staff in a year to tackle
> 'spike in demand'"
>
>Specifically (I quote):
> "Ipswich Hospital spent £11,421,000 on agency staff in one year,
> new figures reveal."
> [...]
> "Nearly 11,000 nursing shifts (10,933) were covered by agency staff
> during the same period."
>
>So that looks like £11421000/10933 = £1044.64 per nursing shift.
>At this point I duly raised my eyebrows.
>
>If you interpret "one shift" as (say) 10 hours worked by one nurse,
>who is unlikely to be personally paid more than £200 for it, then
>that would imply that the agency pockets over £800 for that one
>shift worked by one nurse.
>
>Or perhaps "one shift" means a specific 10-hour shift period during
>which several nurses may work simultaneously. In that case the
>"£1044.64 per shift" could be spread over an average of (say) 5 or 6
>nurses per shift period over the year in question, so about £200
>per nurse per shift period. That now looks more reasonable.
>
>However, 10,933 such shift periods in one year then needs some
>explanation. Maybe "a specific 10-hour shift period" applies to
>a particular speciality, such as Eye/Cardiovascular/etc., so
>over the range of specialities we can have two or more such shift
>periods simultaneously.
>
>But there is nothing whatever in that EADT article which helps to
>resolve such an ambiguity! No source is cited.
>
>So (a) I'm attempting to entertain you RadStats folk with yet another
>example of the inadequacy/incompetence of media reporting of statistics;
>and (b) asking if any of you know what's really happening, and can
>provide a more specifically informative answer (which I am indeed
>interested to know).
>
>Best wishes to all,
>Ted.
>
>-------------------------------------------------
>E-Mail: (Ted Harding) <[log in to unmask]>
>Date: 14-Jun-2016 Time: 10:33:38
>This message was sent by XFMail
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