I now find myself having to cover this topic again due to Shaun Lintern's continual habit of quoting statistics that are at false and/or misleading.
On Tuesday 18th, Shaun Lintern co-hosted #Nurchat. During that chat Shaun tweeted
Now anyone looking at the graph would think that this graph related to band 5 and band 6 nurses with nearly 174,000 being employed. Whereas it is in fact the same graph Shaun Lintern produced in January, which encompasses all nurses irrespective of grade working in 'Acute, Elderly and General' and has nothing whatsoever to to with nursing bands 5 and 6.
The spreadsheet from which this information is taken from can be found here
You will see in this spreadsheet that there is no mention of 'bands' instead it only records levels in this format;
Shaun was questioned over his stats and he claims they come from Individual Trust's ESRs
ESR (Electronic Staff Record) is a HR programme that records the following
You will see that it does not record nursing bands yet Shaun is adamant that the ESRs are collected by HSCIC.
Shaun failed to reply to my tweet, so I emailed HSCIC and asked for a copy of the figures from ESRs. Here's their reply:
Therefore Shaun is telling porkies- they are not on the HSCIC website, it is not published, there is no link between pay band and occupational code and therefore would be impossible for Shaun to produce any statistics and graph them!
I personally cannot fathom why a journalist would set out to deceive the public in this way and my advice to all is to treat any statistics that Shaun Lintern produces with extreme caution.
**UPDATE**
Exposing Shaun Lintern's misunderstanding/misuse of stats feels like a full-time job at times *sigh* - There is more to statistical analysis that just rhyming off a line in a spreadsheet and feel any journalist worth their salt would actually analyse the numbers, especially if they are, like Shaun, hell bent on quoting them at every opportunity in order to appear knowledgeable.
but here's another one;
On the subject of nurses - again - Shaun tweets;
HSCIC in collaboration with the RCN (see above email) undertook a recent study into nursing bands, the datasheet they emailed me states that there are 308,776 "qualified nurses" working in the NHS, of which 245,255 were in bands 5/6. In Acute, Elderly & General, nursing bands 5/6 amounted to 139,510; nothing near the 174,000 Shaun Lintern is reporting!
The data sheets published on the HSCIC website also includes "unknowns" into the figures. So therefore, the "nursing" figures specified do not mean "qualified nurses"!
As specified in my first blog, nursing levels peak every Autumn due to graduate intake and should level off in December. I have asked HSCIC to clarify the definition of 'nurses' used in their data because I have a feeling some will include HCAs + HCA Student nurse pilot scheme. I will update this blog when I receive their response.
*HSCIC state that the nursing stats (bands) are not for general publication - hence why I have not published them in full here but happy to email them to those who have an interest, excluding Shaun Lintern!
