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eRostering to release nurses back to the delivery of patient care - 03/12/2008

Nurses at Sherwood Forest Hospitals NHS Trust will soon have access to an electronic staff rostering system that will help to improve their work-life balance and enable them to spend more time delivering patient care.

The fully automated eRostering & time and attendance system, which includes the use of biometric hand readers to accurately record shift start and finish times is to be installed across nursing in two sites. Using the new system nursing staff will be able to self-roster their own working hours to fit with personal and family commitments, whilst making requests for planned absence or holidays.

The technology removes the need for ward managers to spend hours each month drafting and amending a paper roster whilst introducing fairness as shifts are allocated based on pre-defined rules and preferences from staff. The software, recently procured from SMART will also enable managers to build and publish rosters with at least six weeks notice.

Carolyn White, Executive Nurse Director said, "eRostering will revolutionise our current rostering process enabling us to be more efficient, whilst ensuring fairness for staff, and giving them the ability to self-roster, helping our nurses to achieve their preferred working hours. The key benefit of the software will be the ability to release highly skilled nursing staff from administrative duties back to patient care.

"We saw the SMART system in use at University Hospital Birmingham NHS Foundation Trust and felt it was important to take up the full offering of electronic rostering with time and attendance recording to help lead to a completely paperless rostering system and achieve accurate pay through the integration with our ESR HR & Payroll system".

If you would like further information or would like to request an image to support this release, please contact:

Lucy Caudle, Marketing Manager, SMART
Telephone: 01438 822229
Email: lucyc@smart-workforce.com
Visit www.smart-rostering.co.uk to see our NHS specific website