Self-Scheduling

Self-Schedule. You work so many night/day shifts (if you rotate) per schedule and you have to work so many weekend shifts per schedule. As long as we have x amount of RNs scheduled per shift, your schedule stays the same as what you put down. We have a lot of folks who work a set schedule every month as well.

my unit does self-scheduling. steps: 1)you pencil in your desired schedule. 2) it is tweeked by 2 nurses on the scheduling committee 3) the manager reviews make sure all shifts are covered and the hospitals responsibility is met, therefore she tweeks it a bit more. you schedule is nothing like you submitted.

in my opinion. full-time staff should be scheduled first followed by part-timers followed by per-diems. please send all positive and negative fb and let me know how your unit does scheduling.

our nurses are divided into 3 groups: group a which is all of those who don't rotate shifts, group b and c composed of rotaters. group a always gets to sign up first, b and c take turns being second and third. as long as you put in your required 2/6 weekends, 2/6 fridays and your 9/18 off shifts, they pretty much leave your schedule alone.

the biggest complaint i have is that when we sign up for our 2 12-hour shifts of on call, group a always gets to sign up first for that, too. supposedly it's because a permanent day shifter doesn't want to get stuck with a night call and a permanent night shifter doesn't want a day call. but you know what -- i don't see how that's different from me getting stuck with a day call in the middle of my string of night shifts! it also means that whichever group signs up last gets screwed over big time, often stuck with call on an extra saturday and/or sunday meaning that your 2/6 weekends sometimes (often!) ends up being 4/6. i don't think that's fair. if i got screwed over every third sign up period, i could live with that because everyone is in the same boat. but getting screwed over almost every time when there are people who always get what they want is just not fair!

I have one of the world's best managers. Basically said he needs at least 5 RNs for each shift (we work six 12 hr and one 8 hr shift every 2 weeks). We don't have PT staff in the unit but if we did I would agree that FT should be scheduled first. We can work out weekends, nights etc on our own. Most people want the differential so it's not hard to do. I work an average of 3 weekend shifts every month. The nice thing is that you can have 5-6 days in a row off each month without burning any vacation time. I've rarely ever heard a complaint from anyone. It can be done but if you have people who are unwilling to compromise then you've got a problem. One alternative is having 2 people who work opposite each other, e.g. one does days and the other nights, so they're relieving each other and as a manager you have three 24 hr shifts each week that are covered by only 2 nurses.

I'm a new nurse on a med/surg unit. We have a clinical nurse manager, and three nursing educator supervisors who put out our schedule for six week periods at a time. We do not use self-scheduling, but I would like to make a proposal that we begin because I see a pattern of inefficient use of charge nurse/nursing supervisors and clinical nurse manager time. It is my impression that these four managers spend 50-80% of their daily hours trying to fill holes that exist for the next shift, or the shifts for the next 12-24 hours, even though we have a schedule that exists.

My feeling is that if we had a self scheduling system in place, these highly paid individuals would have to spend less time constantly tweaking the schedule. In addition I think that self-scheduling would give our nursing staff more autonomy, an increased morale and less of the "us/them" mentality on our floor, and that would address filling the holes better... am I being naive? I know this works in other hospitals... any feedback would be helpful. Thanks!

We self sched. in my department. They hired me, an RN, about a year ago, to build the schedule and then implement a self-sched system for the 200 or so staff involved.

Sched is 6 wks long, and the guidelines change per 6 weeks depending on the needs of the department. I map out all shifts, keep meticulous (I hope!) records, and give very specific directions. I break shift requirements down per person so everyone knows what's expected, and then, on a large board, post all available open shifts to be filled on a first come, first served basis. If staff who didn't get first dibs on the list are unhappy with what is left for them, they can negotiate with their co-workers.

We're on our third cycle, and I have high hopes that this will get better and better as we become more adept at working with it. It's "guided" self-scheduling, and takes alot of the push-me, pull-you out of the equation, however, it's very labor intensive.

Moving thread to general nursing discussion forum for more responses. Please also search, as there have been many discussions on this topic that may be of use to you.

I just want to say that I literally LOVE your avatar!!:heartbeat

My unit does self-scheduling. steps: 1)you pencil in your desired schedule. 2) It is tweeked by 2 nurses on the scheduling committee 3) the manager reviews make sure all shifts are covered and the hospitals responsibility is met, therefore she tweeks it a bit more. you schedule is nothing like you submitted.

Exactly! So why call it self scheduling? I dis-like it because it's all pointless. I've NEVER had a schedule come close to what I put down on the paper. I've decided not to bother anymore and just let them do it, they do it anyway! As far as I'm concerned, self scheduling doesn't mean squat. Certain people get what they want all the time and other people get screwed most of the time. It's not a fair system and they get away with it.