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Scheduling is critical for most industries, but especially for healthcare, in that people’s lives may depend on seeing a doctor right away. In addition to keeping enough doctors and nurses on hand, correct scheduling also helps workers stay happy and healthy, and ensures that healthcare organizations maintain a healthy bottom line.
Unfortunately, many types of healthcare require 24/7 staffing. Hospital work, for example, creates shifts that are often difficult to fill. In fact, it has taken decades to discover, develop, and implement rotating schedules.
Physician Shift Scheduling of the Past
In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, night shifts were bare-boned and staffed by tired medical trainees. Their shifts often lasted for 36 hours, and the interns and residents would often log more than 100 hours of work in a week. Trainees managed large wards of sick patients with very little supervision, and were expected to learn through high-stakes trial and error. Lack of electrical lighting made the nocturnal work exceptionally difficult.
Community hospitals that didn’t have access to interns and residents typically relied on a single retired physician or moonlighting doctor. After the invention of the telephone, practice physicians would be on call after working a full daytime shift, and would only go to the hospital to tend to a serious emergency.
Nurses transitioned to standard 8-hour shifts and rotating schedules after World War II. It took hospitals a bit longer to establish the same shifts and schedules for their doctors: Hospitalists became a specialty in the 1990s, and some were nocturnists who specialized in working nights.
Filling the night shift schedule isn’t always easy, though. Lack of sleep, disruptions to social life, and other issues make the night shift less attractive to many healthcare professionals.
Rotating schedules can help both the healthcare worker and the organization that employs them.
Rotating Schedules to the Rescue!
Rotating schedules help healthcare organizations provide adequate care throughout the day and night. They also allow healthcare professionals to have happy, healthy lives at work and at home.
Common rotating schedules
Standard rotating shifts
Workers rotate through blocks of shifts over the course of several weeks.
Slow rotation shifts
Similar to standard rotating shifts, except that workers stay on a particular shift for several weeks.
2-2-3 (Pitman or Panama) Schedule
Employees work 12-hour shifts that rotate through:
• 2 days on, 2 days off
• 3 days on, 2 days off
• 2 days on, 3 days off
• Every other weekend off
DuPont Schedule
• Week 1: 4 consecutive night shifts, 3 days off
• Week 2: 3 day shifts, 1 day off, 3 night shifts
• Week 3: 3 days off, 4 consecutive day shifts
• Week 4: 7 consecutive days off
ByteBloc Software can Help Your Healthcare Organization Offer Great Rotating Schedules
Historically, developing rotating schedules was a logistical nightmare. In the earliest days of physician scheduling, they relied solely on pen and paper or whiteboards. Scheduling required immense amounts of manual labor, complex mathematical calculations, and old-fashioned patience. Just one call-out could trigger a cascade of scheduling errors.
ByteBloc Software changed all that.
Introduced in 1989 for emergency medicine scheduling, ByteBloc Software now helps all types of healthcare organizations provide rotating schedules. For more information on rotating schedules and the software to do it, contact ByteBloc.
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