e-Roster policy: Insights and implications of codifying nurse scheduling.

Area of Science:

• Healthcare Management
• Health Informatics
• Organizational Studies

Background:

• Electronic rostering systems are increasingly adopted in healthcare, notably within the UK's National Health Service, and endorsed by the Carter Review.
• Implementation of electronic rostering necessitates formal codification of the complex staff rostering process.
• Roster policies serve as formal documents outlining the rules and procedures for creating staff rosters.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate the codification of the staff rostering process through the analysis of Roster Policies.
• To understand how codified knowledge in Roster Policies functions at executive and ward levels.
• To evaluate the effectiveness and limitations of electronic rostering in simplifying the nurse rostering problem.

Main Methods:

• Analysis of 27 publicly available Roster Policies approved between January 2010 and July 2014.
• Qualitative examination of policy documents to identify codified rules and procedures.
• Comparative analysis of policy content and implications for rostering practices.

Main Results:

• Codified knowledge in Roster Policies serves as a proxy for implicit, experiential knowledge at the executive level.
• At the ward level, the inherent complexity of the nurse rostering problem persists despite formal codification efforts.
• Electronic rostering systems, while valuable, do not inherently simplify the rostering challenge and require cautious data interpretation.

Conclusions:

• Executives may use codified policies to bridge the gap in experiential knowledge, but this does not resolve ward-level complexities.
• The nurse rostering problem remains a significant challenge, resisting simplification through formalization or technology alone.
• Electronic rostering should be viewed as a tool requiring careful interpretation, not a definitive solution, emphasizing the need for nuanced understanding and implementation.