Staffing levels in sample hospital wards during analysis period
| All nursing staff | Healthcare support workers | Registered nurses | ||||
| Mean | SD | Mean | SD | Mean | SD | |
| Rostered hours | 193.4 | 89.6 | 52.9 | 30.6 | 140.5 | 90.8 |
| Actual hours worked | 185.4 | 88.5 | 49.8 | 29.0 | 135.7 | 90.0 |
| Unfilled hours | 7.9 | 10.0 | 3.1 | 6.1 | 4.8 | 7.6 |
| Rostered hours per patient day | 15.2 | 14.8 | 3.7 | 3.9 | 11.5 | 13.3 |
| Hours worked per patient day | 14.6 | 14.3 | 3.5 | 3.8 | 11.1 | 13.0 |
| Unfilled hours per patient day | 0.6 | 1.3 | 0.2 | 0.6 | 0.4 | 1.1 |
| Fill-rate, of which: | 95.7 | 5.4 | 94.6 | 11.2 | 96.4 | 5.8 |
| Local/Regular staff (%) | 68.3 | 15.8 | 64.3 | 26.5 | 70.8 | 16.9 |
| Bank staff (%) | 20.4 | 12.7 | 28.3 | 23.9 | 16.2 | 12.7 |
| Agency staff (%) | 7.1 | 8.2 | 1.9 | 8.3 | 9.4 | 11.0 |
| Band 2 staff (%) | 23.8 | 14.5 | 77.7 | 25.6 | – | – |
| Band 3 staff (%) | 3.8 | 5.5 | 16.0 | 23.7 | – | – |
| Band 4 staff (%) | 0.2 | 1.0 | 0.9 | 3.7 | – | – |
| Band 5 staff (%) | 47.2 | 11.5 | – | – | 68.4 | 15.7 |
| Band 6 staff (%) | 17.0 | 12.4 | – | – | 22.8 | 13.3 |
| Bands 7 and 8 staff (%) | 3.8 | 4.5 | – | – | 5.2 | 5.8 |
| Staffing below target by at least: | ||||||
| 4 hours | 0.51 | 0.50 | 0.25 | 0.44 | 0.36 | 0.48 |
| 8 hours | 0.47 | 0.50 | 0.23 | 0.42 | 0.33 | 0.47 |
| 12 hours | 0.36 | 0.48 | 0.17 | 0.37 | 0.22 | 0.41 |
| 16 hours | 0.20 | 0.40 | 0.06 | 0.23 | 0.10 | 0.30 |
| 20 hours | 0.15 | 0.36 | 0.03 | 0.18 | 0.07 | 0.25 |
| 24 hours | 0.10 | 0.29 | 0.01 | 0.11 | 0.03 | 0.18 |
| Observations | 19 287 | 19 287 | 19 287 | |||
| Hospital wards | 53 | 53 | 53 | |||
Unit of analysis is the hospital ward-day. Fill-rate is defined as the number of actual hours worked divided by the number of rostered hours. The fill-rate for local, bank and agency staff, and for each NHS pay band, is calculated as the number of hours worked by staff of that type divided by the number of rostered hours. Target staffing is defined as the number of rostered hours in a given ward on a given day. Hours per patient day is defined as the number of staff hours divided by the patient census at midnight (as per the English NHS definition of care hours per patient day).
NHS, National Health Service.