Scheduling Woes

Long time ago people who did schedule got a paid day at home to work on it. Anyone who does the schedule knows why. Seems institutions are to cheap to pay for that now days.

I used to be the night shift supervisor and one of my jobs was to do the schedule for all nurses and techs. What a pain in the patootie! On schedule night, someone would ALWAYS call in and I would have to be pulled out of the office. But even worse than that, I always asked for "requests off" weeks before schedule night and for the last few nights before I was due to turn the schedule in. No one had any requests until the schedule was finished and in the staff binder. Then the requests would come pouring in. Uggghh! I finally decided to just deny the requests unless they could find their own replacement. I am glad that is no longer part of my job description.

You could try a google search for a scheduling program. I know there are several out there. We use an excel spread sheet but mostly plug the people in by hand (by finger? type them in)

When I was the scheduler, I built an Excel program that calculated hours for each person and calculated the number of people scheduled for each shift. If I had it on this computer, I would send it to you.

The biggest problem I had was people who wanted to work forty hours a week and have two days off at a time and never more than three in a row and have every other weekend off...LOL. I also had two nurses who worked opposite each other (nurses work 12 hours shift, aides work 8) and one wanted at least three days off at a time and the other had a bad knee which caused her too much pain if she did more than two days at a time. I made a form to request days off and everyone was told if they didn't use the form, the request would be ignored (the DON's rule, not mine) and I still got tons of requests just told to me in the hall as I walked by or text messaged to my phone...I tried to accomodate requests no matter what. I am so glad I don't do the schedule anymore (even though the person who does it now has made a mess of it).