For doctors

On-call is not a day off, and your calendar should say so

A doctor's rota is published in blocks, changes with swaps and locums, and contains a category nothing else has: on-call. To everyone at home, on-call looks like a day off until the phone goes. The gap between the rota and what your family can plan around is where the friction lives.

Download on theApp StoreComing soon toGoogle Play

The schedules this actually has to cope with

Freeish is built around these, not around a nine-to-five with the occasional exception.

Long days and nights

Twelve to thirteen hours plus handover, in blocks, with the post-nights day that is technically free and functionally spent asleep.

On-call, resident and non-resident

You may be at home and unavailable. A calendar that only knows "busy" and "free" gets this exactly wrong.

Rotations that move you

A new department every few months, each with its own rota shape, so the pattern your family learnt stops being true.

Swaps and locum shifts

Picked up, swapped, given away — the published rota is a starting position, not a record.

What it sounds like at home

“My family treats on-call as free time until I get called in.”
“I finish a night block and everyone expects me at lunch.”
“Every rotation changes the pattern and I have to re-explain it.”
“The rota is on an intranet nobody at home can open.”
“I swap a shift and forget to mention it until it matters.”

Where Freeish fits

On-call goes in as its own block, so "at home but not available" is visible rather than assumed.

Photograph or screenshot the rota and Freeish reads the blocks off it — no retyping between rotations.

Post-nights recovery can go in as an event, which is the only way anyone else knows to leave you alone.

Swaps are one edit, and everyone following sees them without a message.

One week, start to finish

Priya, registrar

The new rotation's rota is published as a PDF grid.
Priya screenshots it and imports the block in a couple of minutes.
Her partner sees the nights and stops scheduling anything social that week.
On-call Saturday shows as busy, so nobody assumes she is free.
She swaps a Tuesday with a colleague and changes one event.

Questions doctors ask

Can it tell on-call apart from a normal shift?

Label it however your rota does. What matters to the people following you is that the time reads as unavailable — which it does, whatever you call it.

Can it import a rota PDF?

Screenshot it and import the picture. It reads the grid the same way it reads a photograph of one on a wall.

Will colleagues be able to see my schedule?

Only people you invite see anything, and only what you mark public. Freeish has no directory and no way to look someone up.

Stop being the schedule. Start sharing it.

Now on iPhone — Android coming soon. Free to start. Import a photo of your next schedule and see who stops asking.