Self-scheduling

I would go to the other units and see how they are doing theirs since it can give continuity throughout the hospital. One of the most important things will be to have someone in charge of the schedule on a regular basis.

One hospital where I worked used a "team" system. Team A would be the first to schedule themselves for a particular period then Team B, then Team C. Each scheduling period it would rotate who went first.

No matter how it's done there needs to be a good way to prevent people from erasing others' requests as well.

Thanks for the quick reply Katnip. Another nurse acutally mentioned breaking it up into teams. I know a nurse on another unit who self-schedules, thanks for the advice!

We have always self scheduled- we work every 3rd weekend and we place people on their w/e at hire- weekend A,B, or C for instance. Other than that, everyone MUST schedule themselves 4 mondays or fridays per 4 week schedule. We may use 4 "Rs" per scheulde(on days we cannot work). Then, we pencil ourselves in(we usually get about 10 days to work on it)- the Assistant NM puts the counts on the bottom of each day and puts the schedule out again for 1 week and it is up to us to switch ourselves off the "over days" to cover the "under days". If it is not a balanced schedule by the time the ANM gets it back- she moves people and then puts out the schedule.

It seems to be a fair system. I do not hear much complaining about it.

My unit does self scheduling. You're basically required to work 4 weekend (Fri, Sat, Sun) days each schedule (4 weeks long) and then there are rules about holidays - they rotate those so that no one works always on Christmas or whatever. Sometimes managers have to change the days you select, but it seems like for the most part, the managers don't mess too much with the schedule.