Is Your Nursing Unit Ready to Enable Self-Scheduling?

April 25, 2022

Creating and monitoring a nurse schedule can be a time-consuming process. In today’s complex healthcare landscape, the benefits of self-scheduling options are becoming clearer as more and more nursing units are adopting this method of managing their shift schedules. Self-scheduling is easy to implement, and rules based. Set up isn’t as difficult as you might think, and the benefits far outweigh any upfront investment of both time and money.

Self-scheduling allows nurses to search and accept shifts within their licensure and qualifications based on guidelines you set beforehand. This takes some scheduling pressure off your Admins and puts some of that control into the hands of your nurses. This creates a healthy work-life balance for everyone involved and will help you optimize your staff much more efficiently.

Better Time Management for Schedulers

Your most valuable resources are your experienced, senior level staff, and they are often appointed managerial tasks like creating/overseeing the unit schedule and training newer staff in addition to managing their own patient load. The right nurse scheduling software can significantly reduce the amount of time spent on staff scheduling, which will allow your leaders to focus on more important matters. Implementing rules-based self-scheduling creates greater efficiency with less effort.

More Trust Between the Team

Nurse schedulers face several challenges in creating unit schedules, like keeping shifts fair and balanced. This is especially true when approving overtime and time-off requests. It’s common for a handful of nurses to continually work overtime while others are under work targets if you don’t have an easy way to see the big picture. The right scheduling software can help you accurately forecast demand through one-click reporting. This lessens the occurrence of gaps in coverage which could otherwise result in hot shifts and urgent labor needs. If you have an easy way to pull a report showing OT thresholds vs. target work hours to combine with your accurate forecasting report, you’ll be able to optimize your staff effectively. Building rules and standard processes with robust, configurable scheduling software creates more transparency and accountability, which in turn improves workplace morale.

Provide a Better Patient Experience

When nurses are satisfied and content with their jobs, the quality of patient care improves. Nurse scheduling software helps you reach your patient care goals by reducing nurse burnout and decreasing agency dependence. If you’re able to easily balance every shift based on credentials, you’ll have a healthy ratio of necessary skills on shift to handle the patient load. Agency labor is a great resource, but there’s a learning curve to every unit. Your in-house staff is already invested in your procedures and they “know the ropes.” Optimizing your own staff will result in high quality patient experiences.

Schedule Transparency

Our web-based nurse scheduling software provides complete schedule transparency, giving you the ability to view your unit schedules in ways that makes managing a complex workforce much easier. Our software gives employees 24/7 access to real-time schedules from any mobile device with internet access.

Messaging capabilities within your scheduling software platform keep everyone on the same page and allows admins to segment relevant messages to select recipients so you can avoid over-messaging your staff. Quickly send out urgent shift needs, relay pertinent information, or set up automated messaging for shift reminders to reduce gaps in coverage.

Stress-Free Onboarding, Training, and Ongoing Support

Nurse scheduling is complex. It’s important to find a solution that meets the specific needs of nurses and administrators, while also ensuring that the technology is a help and not a hindrance.

Schedule360 is intuitive, easy to use, and accessible from any mobile device with internet access. Our stress-free implementation process is designed to get you set up with a scheduling software solution that’s configured to fit your unique needs and we do all the heavy lifting for you. The last thing we want to do is create another burden for you and your staff.

Give Self-Scheduling the Green Light

Schedule360’s nurse scheduling software is designed to give your nursing staff more control over their schedules, while still retaining accountability and oversight to ensure department staffing needs are met. We understand the nuances of self-scheduling and offer a Best In KLAS™solution that will streamline and simplify your entire scheduling process. Contact us to schedule a configured demo of our nurse scheduling software. At Schedule360, We Know Scheduling™