Creating Unstaffed Shifts

Consider a staffing requirement for an ICU, RN for 07:00-19:00 with a 30 minute offset at the start of the shift. If no employees were staffed, an unstaffed shift from 06:30-19:00 would be created where 06:30-07:00 is an offset.

However, Joe is scheduled to the ICU as an RN from 12:00-22:00 and partial staffing is enabled. The difference between the staffed shift and the requirement is 07:00-12:00, plus the 30 minute transition at the start of the shift.

If REQUIRED_MINUTES_FOR_OFFSET = 480 minutes (8 hours) the offset would not be added and an unstaffed shift would be created from 07:00-12:00.

If REQUIRED_MINUTES_FOR_OFFSET = 240 minutes (4 hours) the offset would be added, and an unstaffed shift would be created from 06:30-12:00.

When an update of staffing requirements intends to add an offset to the end of an existing unstaffed shift that didn’t have an offset before, the registry parameter REQ_MINUTES_FOR_ADDING_OFFSET determines the length the unstaffed shift must be before an offset can be added.