How are schedules made?

[telemetry]

Hi,

I was curious about how schedules are created at your department. We are currently doing it by hand then transfer to MS Excel. Would like to know if there is a better way.

Thanks,

[sonofbilbo]

Hi tele,

Here's my info on nurse scheduling. It may have more detail that what you're looking for since we've always had it tied to payroll.

The hospital I used to work used Res-Q (http://www.res-q.com) (it was an ancient system and some smaller units preferred to do a manual schdule). They used it for time and attendance, the nurse managers would manually note who was absent, on vacation, FMLA, or other leave and pay the individual as needed.

We were reviewing the Kronos (http://www.kronos.com/Products/Scheduling.htm) time and attendance which also had a scheduler but the nurse managers were not receptive (they had another system to learn and just did not want to bother with another learning curve).

Most hospitals do a 4 - 6 week schedule, it is tied to payroll (T&A), ours showed whether the person was exempt or non-exempt, was tied to shifts (exempt would be purely days, non-exempt hours could vary and ovetime hours plus shift pay would also be calculated every week, since we do overtime pay after 40 hrs a week, unlike California). The burden fell on the nurse manager to approve and sign off electronically on unexpected changes in schedule (absences: like bereavement, jury duty, sick; overtime; or exchanges). There were different codes used by the staff in the event that they do extra hours in another department, are in training or orientation, are attending an educational course for that day or are doing paperwork versus doing direct patient care. These hours are calculated separately since these are considered non-direct patient care hours and affect the department's budget in different ways.

We've used a program called ScheduleAssist, (http://www.geocities.com/threehillssoftware/scheduleassist.html) and for our department, it wins hands down. Your needs may vary so before I could say it will fit your floor, you should try try it for free (just download it and install). Its a step up from doing things by hand or using Excel but not as complicated and pricey as other kinds we've tried.

Hope this helps,

[telemetry]

Has anyone tried internet based scheduling?