NHS Statistics

Published by bcg on 11 October 2010 in Current Affairs. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , .

I was extremely annoyed this evening to see a Newsnight report in which one lady announced that there are two managers to every nurse in the NHS and how can it possibly take 100 people to run a hospital.  From her non-existent experience of working in a hospital, she told the world that you can run a hospital on far fewer people if they are the right staff.

Well, I found the NHS Information Site and here are the numbers of employees across the NHS as of March 2009:

Doctors: 140,897
Qualified nursing staff: 417,164
Qualified scientific / therapeutic / technical staff: 149,596
Qualified ambulance staff: 17,922
Professionally qualified clinical staff: 725, 579

Support to clinical staff: 377,617

Central functions: 115,818
Hotel, property and estates: 75,625
Manager & senior manager: 44,661
Infrastructure support: 236,103

Other non-medical / unclassified staff: 364

Other GP practice staff: 92,333

As you can see, there are not two managers to every nurse.  In fact, there are nearly ten nurses to every manager.  Of the 1,431,996 members of staff, just over 3% are classified as 'manager' or 'senior manager', compared to over 29% which are classified as 'qualified nursing staff', so say nothing of the other 'professionally qualified staff' that make up over half of the NHS workforce.

The number that surprises me is the 75,625 people working in hotel, property and estates!  I suppose that must include the builders / plumbers / electricians / gardeners who keep the property going.

Anyway, the point is, it seems to be that the ratio of professionally qualified clinical staff to support staff is about right – such an enormous and far-reaching organisation needs a lot of people to keep it running smoothly.  No doubt there is inefficiency, and over-spending on IT etc, but many of the 'facts' that I hear peddled about the NHS and the numbers of nurses & managers are simply not true.

Grace and Mercy

Published by bcg on 6 October 2010 in *Starred and Theology. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , .

I was just chatting with a good friend, with whom I have had many theological discussions.  But it all boils down to the advice he gave me (I'm sure he wouldn't mind me sharing his words!):

His mercies are NEW EVERY MORNING – they need to be because we sin. No condemnation for those in Christ Jesus. Remember your ABCs of Evangelicalism – we sin, God forgives, we give glory.

I have always liked the theology of Karl Barth – a central tenet of which is that we alienate ourselves from God, and cannot get back to him.  So he comes to us with grace and mercy – to which we respond gratefully – and God graciously accepts our imperfect worship.  Our part in our salvation – simple gratitude and worship – is sandwiched within God's movement to us.

Never think you deserve it, never forget who gives it, never cease to worship such an amazing God, Jesus Christ.

Christian Economics

Published by bcg on 4 October 2010 in Church and Theology. 0 Comments Tags: , .

I watched this video with interest, especially given the work I did at Oxford three and a half years ago, entitled 'The idols of death and the God of life'.  Perhaps I should have emailed it to Rowan back then!!  Of course with hindsight, everything is clear..

Absurdity

Published by bcg on 16 July 2010 in Quotations. 0 Comments

The fact that an opinion has been widely held is no evidence whatever that it is not utterly absurd; indeed in view of the silliness of the majority of mankind, a widespread belief is more likely to be foolish than sensible.

Bertrand Russell

Natural Disasters?

Published by bcg on 18 May 2010 in Sci & Tech and Theology. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , .

I am currently watching an excellent series on the BBC called The Story of Science.  The third episode, which I have just watched, is called 'How we got here'.

It of course raises all the red herrings and difficult questions surrounding geology and biology, but one observation from the presenter hit me squarely between the eyes.

The episode ended on a geological note, Dr Mosley talked about how violent Earth is, with the volcanic eruptions and earthquakes caused by continental drift, and the tsunamis that occur when those events happen underwater.

His point was that the development of life is not in spite of Earth being so violent, but is actually helped by it. Some catastrophic events do wipe out entire species, but most of the time the violence actually encourages life to flourish by giving it new opportunities.  His best example was the Rift Valley in East Africa, which is home to hundreds of thousands of animals and birds.

I found this a fascinating argument, that natural 'disasters' help and encourage life to flourish far more often than harming it.  And it made me think – well that's exactly how God operates, bringing life out of death, even totally dead and arid places like the deserts of East Africa, transformed into lush savannah by the violent separating of two continents.

It should not surprise us that he created the world in such a way – that no matter how dreadful the catastrophe, life always survives, somehow, somewhere.  Even at its most harsh and devastating, creation does exactly what it says on the tin.

Does God need chance?

Published by bcg on 10 April 2010 in Sci & Tech and Theology. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , , .

I have long disliked the central place that 'chance' has in modern scientific theories, particularly the 'random' mutations that drive evolution forward. As a Christian I don't like the idea of utter randomness, of chance being the determining factor in the development of life.

I am also aware that as a concept it is lauded by many of the new atheists as the final nail in God's coffin: there is no need for God, there is no proof for God's existence in nature; everything is down to chance, and therefore there is no creator, and no ultimate purpose to life.

A good friend pointed me recently to this article, by Paul Ewart. It is one of those articles that forced me to look at something from a slightly different angle, which is no bad thing.

Paul Ewart argues that – maybe – chance is a necessary aspect of theology, because it helps us to understand the relationship between a sovereign creator and human agency (often called 'free will' – I'm not sure humans actually have free will, but that's another argument).

Perhaps life is like a game of chess, with God as 'an infinitely wise grand master.' No matter what we do, which moves we make, God always wins, the outcome is always good, in the end: 'God adapts his actions in sustaining the world in existence to take account of whatever happens.'

Of course, we would want to argue that God also knows which moves we are going to make, before we make them. We don't 'catch him out' with our wickedness. We mustn't take the chess game analogy too far; instead it is perhaps a helpful way for us to understand how the world appears sometimes (that there is no benevolent almighty God in ultimate control) with what the Bible insists is the case (the Lamb is on the throne).

Seriously, journalists?

Published by bcg on 6 April 2010 in Current Affairs. 0 Comments Tags: , , , .

After my recent post about journalism, I was surprised to read this. It was made worse by the Daily Mail (of course). The Mail's article says:

But now, to the horror of the purists, the game's makers are throwing out the old rule book and allowing proper nouns.

Worse still, not only will the names of places, trademarks and people be permissible, but even words spelled backwards or placed unconnected to other pieces.

Now, it seems that actually this is what's actually going on:

Mattel, which owns the rights to Scrabble in England, is going to release a completely new version of the game there called Scrabble Trickster, in which anything goes, including the use of proper nouns, spelling words backwards, stealing letters, and so on.

No 'throwing out the old rule book' after all then.

Thanks to CNET for sorting out the problem. Shame on the BBC for shocking reporting – it relegates the the true story almost to the end of the article:

[Mattel] will continue to sell a board with the original rules.

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