Providing Better Patient Care with Nurse Self Scheduling Software

August 28, 2019

It’s no secret that being a nurse can be one of the most demanding and difficult occupations. Not only do nurses struggle to keep up with the busy, growing demands of this fast paced career, but they also have the added stress and burden of being responsible for the safety and well being of others.

One growing problem in the healthcare industry is a lack of available nurses, leading to scheduling and staffing headaches for all involved. As healthcare managers struggle to fill open shifts, nurses feel the impact of working far too many hours. This leads to a serious problem called nurse burnout, and it’s a safety concern.

One simple solution that healthcare managers can use to effectively reduce the growing stress levels in their nurses, as well as improve workplace safety and morale for everyone involved, is by implementing the practice of self-scheduling for nurses.

Nurse self-scheduling software allows nurses to provide better patient care in the following ways:

Reducing Nurse Burnout

Due to the overwhelming demands put upon nurses, nurse burnout has become an increasingly serious problem. Nurse burnout goes beyond just feeling tired and overwhelmed at the workplace. It’s characterized as physical, mental, and emotional exhaustion, which tends to occur when multiple frustrations build, such as taking on too many shifts or overtime hours because of staffing shortages.

As a result of nurse burnout, nurses become withdrawn and disengaged, leading to feelings of hopelessness, resentment, lack of motivation, and decreased career satisfaction. This can also become a grave safety concern in the workplace, as nurses may not be able to focus properly or provide adequate and necessary care to their patients, leading to errors and possible safety violations.

Reducing Overtime Hours

By simply providing self-scheduling for nurses, this allows nursing staff to maintain a more properly balanced shift schedule, such as rotating shifts with proper time to rest and recover between their shifts. This helps to eliminate and reduce the instances of nurses working excessive overtime hours, or dangerous overlapping shifts on little to no sleep.

Improving Staff Morale

Providing nurses with more control over their work schedule with the help of nurse scheduling software is one of the best workplace moral boosters as people who feel satisfied and content in their professional and personal lives tend to work harder and maintain a more positive attitude.

Improving Communication to Reduce Staffing Shortages

Attempting to accommodate multiple scheduling needs and last minute shift changes due to unforeseen illness or emergencies can be a logistical nightmare for nursing managers when it comes to communicating their staffing needs to available employees.

With self-scheduling for nurses, they can see which shifts are available, as well as communicate their immediate staffing needs in real time, such as arranging a shift swap, for example.

Optimization of Shifts Based on Credentials

One important element of providing better patient care is ensuring that you’re filling shifts with highly qualified nurses.

Nurse scheduling software helps ensure that only those employees who meet the required qualifications and possess the proper credentials are the ones filling those shifts, as it doesn’t serve anyone well to have unqualified staff signing up for shifts they aren’t capable of fulfilling.

Since nurses are a vital, irreplaceable component to the healthcare industry, it should be every healthcare manager’s top priority to ensure that their nursing staff feels safe, secure, and content so they are able to focus on the incredibly important job at hand which is providing phenomenal patient care. We’d love to show you a customized demo of our nurse self-scheduling software. Contact us today to learn more!