Home › Not in policing? › Nurses
A shift calendar for nurses
Twelve-hour rotations, nights, and bank or agency shifts picked up on the days between. The rotation part works the same way it does for a patrol division; the bank shifts are where most nurses lose track.
What a nursing agreement actually says about your week
Ward rotations are set unit by unit, but the rules they are built on are written down in the agreements — and hospitals publish them. The University of Washington puts its agreement with the Washington State Nurses Association on its own HR site, and it sets out the shape of a nurse’s week in three lines.
“The normal work day shall consist of eight (8) hours, ten (10) hours, or twelve (12) hours... The normal work period shall consist of forty (40) hours of work within a seven (7) day period or eighty (80) hours of work within a fourteen (14) day period... The Employer will make a good faith effort to schedule all regular full and part-time nurses for every other weekend off.”
A fortnight, not a week. Eighty hours over fourteen days is the unit the schedule is really built in, which is why three twelves one week and four the next is normal and why the free weekend moves. Alternate weekends off is an effort the employer undertakes to make, not a fixed pattern — so the days are yours to track rather than to assume.
University of Washington Human Resources, WSNA Northwest contract, Hours of Work and Overtime. Checked 3 September 2026.
If you work nights, your weekend is not the weekend
The same agreement defines it precisely: for day and evening staff the weekend is Saturday and Sunday; for night staff it is Friday night and Saturday night; and for anyone on twelve-hour shifts a shift counts as a weekend shift if the majority of it falls between 11pm Friday and 11pm Sunday.
That is three different weekends inside one hospital, and it is the reason an ordinary calendar is useless to a night nurse: it shades Saturday and Sunday, which are not the days being counted. In BlueShifts you mark the shift you actually worked and when it started, so a Friday night is a Friday night rather than half of two days.
The shifts on top
Bank, agency, an extra shift on a unit that asked on a Tuesday — each goes in under whoever hired you, with the hours, the rate and whether the money has arrived. The rotation underneath stays intact, so at the end of the month you can see what you were rostered for and what you actually did.
What to switch off
The police categories, the court entry and the directories can be renamed, hidden or removed until nothing on the screen mentions policing. What is left is the rotation, the extra shifts and the record of what each one paid.
The rotations this usually means
Whichever of these your employer runs, the cycle is drawn out day by day so you can check it against your own roster before you save it.
4 on 4 off
Twelve-hour blocks that walk through the week and never repeat on the same days.
16 cycle days, reading across the same as the calendar beside it. This pattern walks, so it lands on different weekdays each time round.
Day shiftNight shift24-hour tourDay off
Set the template once. Your days show up on every month after it.
September 2026
3 on 3 off
Shorter blocks, more frequent changeovers.
12 cycle days, reading across the same as the calendar beside it. This pattern walks, so it lands on different weekdays each time round.
Day shiftNight shift24-hour tourDay off
Set the template once. Your days show up on every month after it.
September 2026
Panama (2-2-3)
Two on, two off, three on — and every other weekend free.
Sunday to Saturday, and the strip begins on the same day the calendar beside it does.
Day shiftNight shift24-hour tourDay off
Set the template once. Your days show up on every month after it.
September 2026
Built for police. Works for any rotation.
The law-enforcement side switches off. The rotation engine and the record of what you earned do not care what you do for a living.
Scan to install
