§ Mr. Norman HoggTo ask the Secretary of State for Scotland what is the nurse-to-patient ratio in Scotland.
§ Mr. Michael Forsyth[holding answer 26 October 1987]: A simple ratio of nurses to patients does not measure service provision because of the differing requirements of care and treatment in different sectors of hospital care and in different specialties and because the total workload in hospitals includes out-patients and day cases where it is impossible to relate numbers of attendances to individual patients treated. The whole-time equivalent number of qualified nurses employed in NHS hospitals in Scotland on 31 March 1987 was 28,713 and the number of inpatients, measured by the daily average number of occupied beds in the year ending on the same date, was 45,148. On that basis the nurse-to-patient ratio is 1:1.57.