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Panama schedule
Two on, two off, three on, two off, two on, three off. Twelve-hour shifts on a fourteen-day cycle, with crews rotating between days and nights.
- Shift length
- 12 hours
- Cycle
- 14 days
- Average week
- 42 hours
- Teams
- 4
What the Panama schedule is
Panama is the best known name for the 2-2-3 rotation. Crews work two days on, two off, three on, two off, two on, then three off, and the whole thing resets every fourteen days.
It exists to cover a post twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, with four crews and no gaps. Because the cycle is exactly two weeks long, it lands on the same days of the week every time — which is the single feature people like most about it. Every other weekend is a three-day weekend, permanently.
The name gets used loosely. Panama, Pitman and 2-2-3 all describe the same on-off cadence. What separates them in practice is whether crews change between days and nights, which is covered below.
How the cycle runs
One full fourteen-day cycle, from the crew's point of view:
Day shiftDay off
Days and nights
Under a true Panama, crews rotate between day and night tours — commonly swapping after each twenty-eight day block, though some agencies rotate at the end of every fourteen-day cycle and others after several months.
That slow rotation is deliberate. Flipping between days and nights every couple of shifts is far harder on sleep than staying on one tour for a month at a time. If your agency never rotates crews between days and nights, what you are working is closer to a Pitman.
Save this pattern once and the year fills itself in — forward as far as you want, and back over the months you have already worked.
Slow rotation Panama
When people say slow rotation Panama, they mean the version where a crew holds one tour for a full twenty-eight day block — four complete cycles — before flipping to the other. The 2-2-3 rhythm never changes; only the time of day does, and only once a month.
It is the most common arrangement in policing, and the reason is sleep. A month is long enough for a night crew to build a sleep pattern and keep it, which is impossible on a fast rotation. The cost is the changeover itself: the week you flip is the hardest week of the month, and it arrives on a schedule you can see coming.
Faster variants exist. Some agencies swap tours at the end of each fourteen-day cycle, some at the end of a quarter. All of them are still Panama — save the block length your agency actually runs and the calendar handles the flip for you.
Hours and overtime
The cycle produces seven twelve-hour shifts every fourteen days — eighty-four hours a fortnight, averaging forty-two hours a week.
That average hides an alternation officers know well: one week is thirty-six hours, the next is forty-eight. Where the overtime threshold falls in that pattern depends on your agency's work period and your contract, which is exactly why keeping your own hour count matters.
Who works it
Panama shows up anywhere a post has to be covered around the clock:
- Police patrol divisions and sheriff's offices
- Dispatch and communications centers
- Corrections and detention
- Hospital nursing units
- Manufacturing and refining
- Security and campus policing
The trade-off
What works
- The cycle repeats every fourteen days, so your days off land on the same weekdays forever
- A three-day weekend every other week, built in
- Never more than three shifts in a row
- Easy to plan around months ahead
What hurts
- Twelve-hour shifts are long, and the third one in a row is felt
- Alternating 36 and 48 hour weeks complicate pay and overtime math
- Rotating between days and nights disrupts sleep, even done slowly
- Court appearances often fall on your days off
Put it on your calendar
Two on, two off, three on — and the block you worked last week is the block you are off this week. Counting that out on a paper calendar is where the mistakes happen.
Save the fourteen days once and it runs forward as far as you want to look, with the day and night halves in the right place.
Common questions
Are Panama and Pitman the same schedule?
They share the same 2-2-3 on-off cadence. The usual distinction is that Panama rotates crews between day and night tours, while Pitman keeps a crew on one tour permanently.
How many hours a week is a Panama schedule?
Forty-two on average — alternating between a 36-hour week and a 48-hour week across the fourteen-day cycle.
Why is it called Panama?
The name is industry shorthand rather than an official standard, which is why the same pattern travels under Panama, Pitman and 2-2-3 depending on who you ask.
Put the Panama schedule on your calendar
Save the Panama schedule once, tell BlueShifts the day your cycle starts, and the rest of the year draws itself. Then the off-duty work you pick up around it goes in beside the shifts.
Scan to install — or hold it up for the officer next to you.
