Shiftmatch Cohort Model - Congrats Naomi Parkins!

Congratulations to Naomi Parkins, SCGOPHCG Nurse Manager, Patient Flow Unit, for presenting her Innovative Future project at the 10th International Congress on Innovations in Nursing (external site) in May 2021.

Naomi, along with Michael Stuart and Keren Smith applied to the Innovative Future (IF) program in round one, to address the problems they were experiencing with managing casual staff shifts. The booking system at the time was administrative intensive, had a high risk of error, and was fraught with inconsistencies across different areas. To improve the process, a system needed to be implemented that was transparent, dynamic, efficient, user friendly, consistent, and allowed ease of communication.

Enter Shiftmatch Cohort Model

Shiftmatch is a web-based rostering system that automatically matches suitably qualified staff to roster shortages, and communicates the shortage to them via SMS, email or Push notification.

Over a 12-week period Naomi worked tirelessly in constructing the inaugural model and the site-centred needs with the vendor, liaising with Nurse West and HSS, managing communications, arranging and facilitating training workshops and Q&A sessions for managers and staff, collating data to upload to the new system, and then addressing issues as they arose after the ‘Go-Live’ date to make the Shiftmatch Cohort Model happen.

This was a huge undertaking and not without its challenges, but the hard work has proved worthwhile. Naomi said,

“I trust the system 100%. With limited resources and ever changing workloads, this system has shown so many management efficiencies already. It has much more capability and I look forward to implementing these soon.”