Two wards expecting the same nurse
On Tuesday morning, one booker puts a nurse forward on a trust portal for Thursday's long day, and the trust accepts. On Tuesday afternoon, another booker rings the same nurse about a Thursday day shift at a care home. She says yes, forgetting the first one. The care home booking goes into the system; the portal booking is still waiting to be entered.
On Thursday morning, two clients expect her. One of them is let down, and your booker spends the morning apologising and finding a replacement.
Why clashes slip through
The booking system only knows about a booking once someone enters it. When bookings are agreed across portals, phones and texts, there is a gap between agreement and entry, and that gap is where double bookings live.
- Portal acceptances are entered into your system later.
- Out-of-hours bookings are entered the next working day.
- Nurses are offered shifts by several bookers at once.
- Provisional holds, such as 'I've put you forward', are not recorded at all.
- Nurses' own commitments elsewhere are unknown.
What double bookings cost
A client left short at short notice is a client less likely to use you next time. The nurse is put in an awkward position. Your booker's morning goes on repair work. And frameworks and clients may count it in the same way as a no-show.
The repair work also has a knock-on cost. The replacement nurse is often found at short notice at a higher pay rate, or taken from another booking, which moves the problem somewhere else.
| Moment | Where it is recorded now | With one booking record |
|---|---|---|
| Nurse put forward on a portal | Nowhere, until accepted and entered | Recorded as a hold |
| Portal acceptance | Entered later | Converted from hold to booking |
| Booking by phone | Entered when the call ends, or later | Entered during the call, with a clash check |
| Out-of-hours booking | Next working day | Entered from the on-call phone |
| Nurse busy elsewhere | Unknown | Blocked in the nurse's availability |
How we build clash-free booking
- Every channel writes to one booking record: the office booking screen, the on-call mobile screen, and portal submissions where integration allows.
- When a nurse is put forward for a shift, a hold is recorded against her time straight away.
- Each new offer, hold or booking is checked against her existing holds and bookings, including travel time between sites if you set it.
- Clashes are shown to the booker before the offer is sent or the client is told.
- When a portal acceptance comes in, the hold becomes a booking; when a portal declines, the hold is released.
- Nurses can block time they have committed elsewhere in their availability calendar.
- Holds that are not converted within the time you choose are released automatically, with a note to the booker.
What bookers see
A booker offering a shift sees immediately that the nurse is already held or booked. Holds from portal submissions show up the moment they are made, not when the acceptance is entered. Out-of-hours bookings exist straight away. And Thursday mornings stop featuring two clients expecting the same nurse.
Nurses appreciate it too. A nurse who says yes to two bookers in the same afternoon is told straight away that the second shift clashes, rather than finding out on the day that she has let a ward down.
Is this happening to you?
- Nurses have been booked into two shifts at once.
- Portal acceptances are entered into your system later.
- Bookings put forward but not yet accepted are not recorded.
- On-call bookings are entered the next day.
- Different bookers offer the same nurse overlapping shifts.