22.08.12
The bigger picture
Figures and statistics can be so easily manipulated to present whatever agenda key organisations within the health service wish to portray, and as always, the devil is in the detail.
The number of nurses working in the NHS has fallen, quite considerably, since the Coalition came to power in May 2010.
But the move to more integrated care means that many of these job losses will actually be nurses working within the community, for private firms or the voluntary sector.
It thus becomes more difficult to quantify the exact number of nurses who are no longer employed due to frontline cuts.
However, ministers’ reiterations of the overall figure of clinical staff – which has apparently risen by 2,400 – indicates that the statistics are not so promising when considered individually.
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