Weekly Hospital Workforce Data: A Data Visualisation Exercise

: Quantifying the health workforce in terms of overall staff numbers and their ratio to patients under their care can strengthen analytical studies designed to inform policy regarding how hospital services are delivered. Information about staffing is traditionally obtained via location-specific audits or self-reported information gleaned from surveys which hold potential biases around time-dependence and recall. In contrast, work presented in this paper describes the derivation of useful workforce metrics from routine hospital financial and clinical information systems that overcome these biases. Staffing data is aggregated, visualised and linked to patient demand to gain insight into spatial and temporal variations in hospital staffing and workload. Overall, hospital staff resourcing varies noticeably across a week, with staff numbers and staff-to-patient ratios dropping to low levels at night and across a weekend. Exploration of staff-to-staff ratios allows further insight into staff dynamics across a week and the variation of supervision level.