Editorial Comment

We give overleaf the source of the recent Press 'disclosures' concerning Winwick Hospital. Emphasis is placed on the fact that these recommendations are planning objectives. In other words things might not turn out quite like this. Nevertheless, action will be taken to decrease the number of beds here.

And it follows that long-term projects in the Hospital, begun in good faith yesterday, could be nonsense tomorrow.

One of these is surely the Swimming Pool Fund, which at the moment stands around £800. It would appear sensible to think of some other way to use this money.

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Taken from MCS report 72/152

Reduction of Beds in Large Mental Illness Hospitals

At the meeting of the Mental Health Technical Advisory Committee held on 24th August 1972, consideration was given to a report of the Senior Administrative Medical Officer on the reduction of beds in large mental illness hospitals in the Region. Following their consideration of the matter the Technical Advisory Committee agreed the following recommendations:

(i)	That the objective should be the closure by 1985 of large psychiatric hospitals, and to plan for an eventual transfer of long-stay patients to suitable accommodation within their area of residence, or if this is not known, to the area allocated to the patient.
(ii)	That Sub-Regional Units should be provided for particular types of patient, e.g. alcoholics
(iii)	That as new units open at least a corresponding number of beds in a large psychiatric hospital should close.

These recommendations have now been approved by both the Medical Advisory Council and the Regional Board.

It is emphasised that at this stage these are the planning objectives of the Board in relation to the reduction of beds in large mental illness hospitals.

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FISHING CLUB NEWS

The fourth meeting of the Fishing Club was held on Monday evening, November 27th at 6.30, in the Social Therapy Department.

We were privileged to have as our general speaker Mr. S. Green, Chairman of the North West Disabled Anglers Assoc., who kindly extended an invitation to our Club to become a new branch of the parent Assoc. Naturally we jumped at the chance. This provides us with many advantages, not the least of which will be almost unlimited fishing waters.

Membership, I am glad to say, is steadily increasing, attendance on the 27th being seventeen - 12 patients and 5 staff. Finances stand at £7.00, and I understand that our Treasurer, Mr. J. Jolley, is now opening an account in the hospital bank.

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QUERY

If any reader has any fishing tackle that is surplus to requirements we would be delighted to receive same. Also we require any number of cigarette coupons to enable us to acquire fishing equipment for our patient angling friends.

STAN JONES (Hon. Sec.)
Roy MATHER (Chairman)

Next meeting

December 11th, same venue. All welcome

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WARRINGTON INFIRMARY - REGIONAL BOARD 'CONCERNED'

Warrington Executive Council have received a reply from the Liverpool Regional Hospital Board, following the Council's recent complaints about lengthy waiting lists for appointments at the orthopaedic clinic at Warrington Infirmary, the inadequate facilities there, and the time people spent waiting to be seen in the clinic and also the casualty department.

In the letter, the secretary of the Board, Mr. J.D. Shepherd, said, "The Regional Board shares your concern over the need to improve conditions at Warrington Infirmary and is making every effort to improve matters." He went on to say that waiting times at the hospital had been reduced to some extent, although they were still not satisfactory, and the Board hoped there would be a considerable improvement when additional clinic accommodation is brought into use.

The letter also admitted that the Warrington area had fewer hospital beds per thousand population than any other part of the Liverpool Region, but said that the building of the new Runcorn District General Hospital should relieve the burden on the Warrington Hospitals.

PUBLICATIONS COMMITTEE

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CHRISTMAS DINNER

Will those requiring christmas Dinner (1.00 p.m. approx.) on 25th December 1972 please pay the cashier the appropriate money (18½p) any time before 18th December.

CATERING DEPT.

SOCIAL THERAPY REVIEW W/E Dec. 3rd

Two football matches this week, one at home against Deva and one away against Rainhill. Deva lost their match by 9 goals to 6. Rainhill and Winwick combined to make two teams for a knock-about. The match was claimed by Winwick as we had a full team.

The Winwick staff team, who play friendly matches at the weekend in preparation for the hospital cup, have won five out of five matches to date. It looks like the new captain has brought them luck.

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LETTER TO THE EDITORS

"When are staff not staff?"

Some time ago I put in the latest in a series of requests for ward keys to the Unit Officer in charge of distributing them. A couple of days ago I was stopped by the same Officer who said that keys were only available to staff.

"We are staff."

"Nursing staff."

"We are nursing staff."

"I mean ward staff."

May I say that the staff of Social Therapy attend nearly every ward every week.

And that we changed the lock on the Gymnasium door to take a ward key so that ALL nurses could get in and out. And that one of our staff has been without a key for nearly four years. What a silly situation.

D. J. DEVINE

EXPLOITED STUDENTS?

At the National Union of Students conference held in Margate last week, delegates accused hospital authorities of "barefaced exploitation" of student nurses.

The conference accepted a resolution that student nurses were treated as menials during working hours and were then subjected to an "oppressive, archaic and intolerable" system of hostel accommodation.

Executive member Mike Terry promised that the executive would undertake to bring forward by the next conference proposals to change the union constitution in order to bring nursing students into membership.

PUBLICATIONS COMM.

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THANKS

May we make use of your pages to express our appreciation of the social evening organised by Mr. B. McAuley in the Staff Social Club on Thursday, November 30th. The food and entertainment was excellent, and we thoroughly enjoyed ourselves, so thank you to all who made the evening a success.

M. Kettle
G. Puzzar
A. Mitchell
W. Terry

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WANTED

Carry-cot (with stand if possible) Box No. 1

WORK STUDY Part XV

Work Measurement Cont.

Rating Performance:

Rating depends upon the assessment of the working performance in terms of speed and effectiveness according to a numerical scale. The scale has a defined datum point. One such datum is said to be the equivalent of a man walking over level ground at three miles an hour, this performance is called normal. The concept of a standard performance is also used, generally in association with the normal, and is a performance one third greater, i.e. four miles an hour. It is the job of the time study man to "Rate" the operation, as well as to time him, while the study is in progress. Whereas timing is in effect, measurement (with a stop watch), rating is a matter of judgement, even when made by a well trained time study man.

Before any comparison made between the performance observed and the normal performance can be used to modify the observed time it must be translated into numerical terms. It can then be used as a factor by which the observed time can be multiplied to relate it to the normal time.

There are several scales of rating, the most commonly used being those in which normal performance is represented by 100, 60 and 75 respectively. These are merely different means - like Centigrade and Fahrenheit thermometers - of assessing the same thing. In this country the 75 normal scale (BRITISH STANDARD) is probably the most popular.

Establishing a Basic Time The purpose of rating and timing is to arrive at the basic time in which the job should be completed. The timing indicates how long the worker actually took to complete each element - the rating shows how his performance compared with a basic performance or standard. It is a simple arithmetical procedure to use this information to calculate how long the worker would require to complete each element at the basic performance, instead of at his own performance. Whether times are expressed as a normalised basis will depend on a number of factors, not least of which is the firms attitude to payment by results. The difference between normalised and standardised performance is illustrated in the following example.

Suppose that the time taken for a particular element was an average of eight seconds at a 90 rating, using the 60-80 scale. The normalised time would be:

8 secs. x 90
------------  =  12 secs.
     60

The standardised time would be:

8 secs. x 90
------------  =   9 secs.
     80

It will be seen that the normalised time is one third greater than the Standardised time. Thus in most schemes, when noralised times are issued payment by results is paid according to the worker's success at keeping the time required to complete the job within those limits. Thus, if he took nine seconds, the remaining three seconds would count for payment by results. When times are issued at the standardised rate the payment by results is regarded as "built in" i.e. if the time taken in the example - is nine seconds then payment by results could be paid.

Basic times for each element are added together to give a basic time for the work cycle. This is the basic time allowed for completion of the job but a further adjustment has to be made to take account of allowances.

J. SHAW

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CLUB NEWS

Snooker

Winwick's B team were going very strongly in Division B until this week, lying in third place. However, they had a bad result at home against St. Mary's, crashing 7 - 1.

The A team were three games up at Newton, but still lost 5-3 and are now propping up Division B.

Fixtures for Dec. 14th

	Winwick A v Alliance Box A	7.30 start
	Farmers Arms v Winwick B	7.00 start

Billiards

Result   Thames Board 4 - Winwick Hospital 3

Fixtures

Newton C.Y.M.S. v Winwick Hospital

P. HASTRY

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Kevin and Margaret Bryan
wish to announce the arrival of their first child
a son MARK WILLIAM
Born Saturday 2nd December 1972 at 9.30 p.m.

We wish to thank all friends for cards & good wishes.

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Farewell to F. McKie T/Staff Nurse.

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