Rayvin

Can you please read this post:

The first set of numbers comes to 31,000, and then the retentions take it to 50,000. I have no idea why you wanted me to do that when we both know you're just going to be frustrated by the answer.

Yes there will be. And you can suspect what you want, I mean 2030 is so far away that it doesn't matter anyway in fairness. But I'm not choosing to believe him per se, I'm saying that the maths is technically correct and that what they're saying does make sense, if they can achieve it. They make 50,000 new posts and populate them through a 31,000 recruitment drive, and 18,500 made up from the left over surplus of the usual intake that is no longer fully committed to replacing outgoing nurses because of a fall in departures. That's it. That's all there is to it.

I don't see that his comment changes anything mate. It's saying things we've all agreed on. What about his comment makes any difference to my argument?

All he's saying there, is that 31,000 will be newly recruited under this policy. That doesn't contradict anything I'm saying. "New recruits" is not the same as an "overall addition".

No, I want you to tell me what happens to that surplus. Either you don't believe there is one, or you think that the surplus is just going to be discarded or absorbed somehow. The Tories have specifically stated that they will go from 280,000 nurses, to 330,000.

How isn't it? Go on, if that surplus isn't adding to the overall net number of nurses, where is it going?

Thank fuck, someone asked the obvious question. Which I answered in my very first post... I would also like to add to it, that the NHS intended to do it anyway - which means they can capitalise on something someone else was already doing. And that retaining 18,500 skilled and experienced nurses sounds better than hiring 18,500 new and inexperienced ones. And they know how many are leaving based on current levels of departure. They will just extrapolate that over the period. This is what managers do to look at trends and plan for the future.

I'm saying that we recruit nurses every year as standard. The number is apparently 15,000. We do this every year because as Renton keeps saying (which I don't understand because it supports my argument), nurses in the NHS are replaced when they leave. They are. They are replaced ewerk, they fucking are. So here's the thing - if we need to replace fewer nurses, then there is a surplus left over by the yearly intakes. That is where the net gain is - because the number recruited year on year will not change. The Tories have claimed that we will reach a total of 50,000 by "saving" 18,500 nurses over 10 years, which will effectively be generated by this surplus year on year until they hit 18,500. And then they pull another 31k out of their arses somehow, and bang. 50,000.

You and me both

I don't know why you're obsessing about this so you're going to have to then explain what bearing that has on anything. Yes they are replaced.

This is literally my point. I'm not saying, nor have I said anywhere, that it isn't political grandstanding. It is. But the claim is technically correct. And right now, Meenzer, I fucking love you.

Ewerk, please - what about the above isn't working for you? Please, I'm begging you

To try to simplfy things, I removed the 31,000 as part of my argument. We all agree on that point anyway. When I say net gain, I mean the 18,500 is a net gain. Let's just leave the 31,000 out of it.

No, because in this limited example we aren't talking about the 31,000. We're just talking about what is happening with the retentions. They're being kept and THEIR REPLACEMENTS IF THEY HAD LEFT ARE BEING HIRED ANYWAY. By the YEARLY INTAKE of recruited nurses which will remain CONSISTENT THROUGHOUT THE PERIOD.

Because I need to understand this and no one is actually able to explain to me why I'm wrong. You keep thinking you have but you haven't. Your last answer addressed nothing I said, other than to dismiss it as 'not what happens in reality'. Which bit isn't what happens in reality? In reality there isn't a yearly intake of new recruits? Where are you getting the figure of 31,000 new posts created from? Because the government and everyone else reporting on it continues to claim it's 50,000. I cannot understand for the life of me, why we are dismissing the fact that if intake numbers remain the same, and departures fall, this is a net gain. Quiff has actually proven the point already with his football analogy. It is a net. fucking. gain. At this point, I'll be honest with you - I want to be wrong. I really do. I want someone to just say "yeah but you haven't considered..." and then the penny will drop, I'll look stupid but I won't care because I'll feel fucking liberated. But I cannot make my head bend reality so as to ignore the fact that retaining staff while taking a consistent yearly intake is a net gain.

You could look at your own personal finances the same way. If you earn £30,000 a year, and you spend £20,000 of it on living expenses, then you are left with £10,000 saved each year. If you find a way to cut down your living expenses to £18,000, then each year you save £12,000 instead. Your gran dies and you get a windfall of £30,000 on top of that. So after 10 years, you have saved £50,000 more than what you would have estimated to have saved before you cut your expenses down and received your inheritance. What you guys are trying to claim, is that the extra £20,000 saved through cutting down your expenses, because it's technically retention, somehow doesn't actually count.

Me, Channel 4's fact check site, this fullfact charity, and even the guardian, it seems - we all had that knock apparently. They're not replacing people as they go, they're getting a yearly intake no matter what, from graduates or whatever other normal intake channels exist. Every year, 15,000 people graduate into the nursing system and that number remains, I assume, fairly consistent. These people fill positions that are being vacated. In theory, they're meant to keep the number static at 280,000 overall nurses. EDIT - forget the bit about the shortfall which I just edited out, it's referring to a different thing. What the Tories are claiming, is that the 15,000 ever year will continue. 18,500 people over the next ten years will be persuaded to stay compared to current levels of departure (as in, if 15,000 people a year leave right now, it means that all 15,000 new recruits are used up replacing them - so therefore, if they reduce that number to 10,000, they are in effect increasing the yearly number of nurses by +5,000). And 31,000 additional nurses will be found somehow.

Net increase of 1.

Only if Ashley then replaces him anyway, is it the same.

Can you just explain why maintaining normal recruiting levels that are, at present, presumably intended to replace departure levels - and then lowering those departure levels - does not result in a net increase?

What does that add to the conversation? Yes, that's great. Whatever we do now would keep going at the current levels to offset the current departures and keep the number static. They find some way of hiring an additional 31,000 on top of this, and they also stop 18,500 people from leaving. It's net 50,000. It just is. I'm sorry like, but it fucking is.

Apparently the NHS released a long term plan in January of 2019 that claims the following: The NHS’s Long Term Plan, released in January this year, already contains a commitment to improve “staff retention by at least 2 per cent by 2025, the equivalent of 12,400 additional nurses”. Curiously, they are viewing an increase in retention as being equivalent to an additional 12,400 nurses. As an aside, this suggests to me that the Tories have simply inflated this number a bit and claimed it was all their idea - but still, it is again supporting what I'm saying. This is painful lads, I don't at all get why none of you are understanding that if we hire a fixed number of new nurses over a period as part of the normal recruitment and training within the industry and accept (as Renton says) that the ideal is for this number to keep the overall tally static - but then choose to hang on to 18,500 who would otherwise have left by improving working conditions - that we overall get net 18,500 more. They've even given an actual set of numbers. We have 280,000 nurses in total atm and they've claimed that by 2030 it will be 330,000. So that is them confirming that they will create 50,000 more posts. Whether they're capable of filling them is entirely irrelevant, they're being created.

You are saying here that if no policy action was taken, those 19,000 nurses would be replaced. I agree. How would they be replaced? My assumption is that most of the influx of new NHS nurses comes from university graduations. So that number remains reasonably constant and we take all of them in year on year as normal. Apparently that number is about 15,000. If we persuade these 19,000 to stay, and still keep hiring 15,000 each year, what happens to the overall number?