Your family shouldn't need a copy of the unit schedule
Nursing schedules arrive as a grid: a month at a time, self-scheduled or assigned, in a format built for the unit and not for anyone at home. It changes when you pick up, swap or get floated. Everyone who depends on you — a partner, a parent, whoever collects the kids — is working from a photo you sent three weeks ago.
The schedules this actually has to cope with
Freeish is built around these, not around a nine-to-five with the occasional exception.
Three 12s
0700–1930 or 1900–0730, three shifts a week, rarely the same three. The two hours of handover either side are why "I finish at seven" is not the same as being home at seven.
Rotating days and nights
Blocks of days followed by blocks of nights, sometimes inside the same week. The turnaround day after a night block is not a day off, whatever the schedule calls it.
Self-scheduling then reconciliation
You put in requests, the manager balances the unit, and what comes back is not what you asked for. The version your family saw is the version you requested.
Weekend and holiday rotations
Every other weekend, plus a holiday rotation set months ahead — the two things extended family most want to plan around.
What it sounds like at home
- “My partner asks what I'm working this week and I have to go find the photo.”
- “My parents want to help with the kids but never know which days to offer.”
- “I picked up an extra shift and nobody at home found out until I didn't come home.”
- “Nights mean I'm asleep when everyone else is awake, and nobody knows when to not ring the doorbell.”
- “Every month I take the same photo of the same grid and send it to the same four people.”
Where Freeish fits
Photograph the posted schedule and Freeish reads the shifts off it — the monthly grid becomes a month of events without typing anything.
Pick up a shift and everyone who follows you sees it, without a second message.
Your appointments, therapy and anything else stay private — the people watching your schedule see that you are busy, not what you are doing.
Family see a plain answer to "is she working Thursday?" instead of counting squares on a photographed grid.
One week, start to finish
Maya, med-surg
- The February schedule goes up on the unit noticeboard.
- Maya photographs it on her way out and imports it in about a minute.
- Her husband sees the three 12s that week and takes the school run on all of them.
- Her mum sees the night block and knows not to call before two in the afternoon.
- Maya picks up an extra Saturday. Nobody has to be told — it is already on their view.
Questions nurses ask
Can it read the schedule my unit posts?
Will my family see my patients or where I work?
What about the appointments I do not want shared?
I swap shifts constantly. Does that mean re-importing everything?
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.