Go ahead, make plans
At Nursegrid we know that a work day—and your work life—is rarely straightforward, especially when you’re a nurse. The demands of long shifts and physically and emotionally draining work can put pressure on nurses both personally and professionally. A lot of you have expressed interest in Nursegrid offering you more flexible ways to schedule personal events that impact your professional life to help you stay organized and on top of all that you do. We’re listening, and this week we’ve released an update to Nursegrid Mobile that offers you more flexibility and choice in event types.
Read on to learn about what we’ve added, and head here if you’re not sure how to update your iOS device. (Android users, your devices are set to update apps automatically; you can adjust these settings in the Play Store.) If you are accessing Nursegrid on the web, the newest features will soon be available to you just by logging in.
Manage personal events on work days
You’ve been asking for it, and we’re excited to introduce our all-new Personal event type. Stuff comes up for all of us. In the past you’ve likely scheduled events in your Nursegrid Calendar for which our Meeting event type just didn’t feel right—whether it was a doctor’s appointment, picking up the carpool from school, or breakfast with your favorite colleague after a long night shift. Now we’ve got you covered. When creating a new event in your app just choose the ‘Personal’ event type and add a note to remind yourself what you’ve blocked time for.
These events are still associated with a worksite, but will not appear to colleagues or your manager—they will only show on your calendar as a small colored dot on the appropriate date.
Keep your work shifts organized and manageable
We’ve added two new shift types as well: Unavailable and Preceptor. Just like you’ve been able to add Available to Work hours, you can now explicitly indicate to colleagues or your manager that you don’t want to receive swap and giveaway requests for certain days and times with the Unavailable event type—say, when you don’t have a work shift planned but you do have a vacation to Hawaii planned.
You can also now differentiate between Regular, Charge, On Call, and Preceptor shifts. These shift types are now available in our expanded roster of events that you can track with your Nursegrid calendar.
See what you need at a glance
As with all our shift and event types, your month view Calendar will indicate what’s happening on each day with a small icon, so you can see at a glance what’s coming up and click into that day to learn more. With this newest release, we’ve even added a few icons for you in response to user requests—federally recognized holidays. If you don’t like them, you won’t hurt our feelings by deciding to toggle them off in your Calendar Options (located in the top right of the calendar screen).
Update your schedule as life happens
The last update to your Calendar is the ability to change existing shift and event types after you’ve created them. You’ll probably get the most use out of this new feature for Sick Days; now you can change an existing work shift into a Sick Day—after you’ve fallen ill and gotten approval from your manager, of course.
You can keep track of unplanned PTO like sick days, update the hours on shift, change a shift to remind yourself you’ve picked up charge or preceptor duties, or adjust to anything else that might come up—just click an existing event or shift to edit. Learn more about all our event types and what you might use here.
As we continue to enhance Nursegrid Mobile, we’re always keeping your time in mind. One final update with this release makes our shift entry process smarter if you happen to change your primary shift, like from day to night. It will recognize the change and default to it more quickly, saving you time while entering lots of shifts at once.
We’re constantly working to improve our products based on your feedback. Let us know what you think, ask a question, or just say hi at support@nursegrid.com. Thanks for being a #Nursegridder!
