When Krista Niedermeier, DNP, MNA, CRNA, started her job as director of anesthesia at a pediatric hospital in Birmingham, Alabama, she instantly encountered an outdated, time-consuming process for scheduling her staff.
Trying to juggle time-off requests and other scheduling challenges caused a lot of headaches and frustration. She recalled working from home for hours, constantly erasing things on a paper schedule.
“Staff would text me time-off requests, but they also had a slip of paper that they had to fill out. I got so many of those pieces of paper that every time I saw paper, I would start to twitch,” she said, adding that she has received up to 900 requests a year from her staff of 50.
In addition to time-off requests, she had to manage the order in which staff members would leave work every day. She had to make sure the order was different so the same person wouldn’t always be leaving first or last.
Seeing her frustration, Krista’s husband, Ricky Niedermeier, MCIS, BSEE, thought he could help. As an electrical engineer and software developer, he was confident technology could solve Krista’s problems. He presented her with a basic version of the website that would go on to become MyStaffSchedule, a tool that helps organize group scheduling.
“As I showed her the website, I saw her phone and her smartwatch blowing up with text messages from her staff. They were asking, ‘Can I be out early tomorrow? Can I come in late? Can I have this day off?’ It was constant,” he said. “I realized the ability to make requests needed to be an integral part of MyStaffSchedule.”
Ricky worked on the request process, making sure it was as simple as possible and that all requests could be easily tracked. He showed Krista the updates a week later. Soon after, she ditched paper scheduling for good.
Describing the site’s ease of use, she said, “My staff can make requests from anywhere. They don’t have to be at work, and they don’t have to have a piece of paper or put it at my door. Everyone can see the schedule anywhere they go.”
MyStaffSchedule went into production in February 2021. It now has approximately 2,000 users across the United States. Earlier this year, MyStaffSchedule joined the American Association of Nurse Anesthesiology (AANA)’s Rm8 Innovation Lab for emerging healthcare startups. Rm8 (pronounced “Room 8”) provides a supportive environment for startups to incubate product and service ideas and facilitate growth.
Rm8 focuses on collaboration and creates an opportunity to bridge healthcare startups with the Certified Registered Nurse Anesthetist (CRNA) community as well as the broader healthcare market. Rm8 embodies AANA’s commitment to driving innovation and progress within the healthcare landscape.
The Niedermeiers look at their involvement with Rm8 as an opportunity to help more CRNAs – both schedulers and the CRNAs on staff using the schedule every day.
“We built this software to solve Krista’s problems, but we want to share this tool with anybody and everybody who can benefit from it. MyStaffSchedule is not about staff and it’s not about scheduling. It’s about saving you time,” Ricky said.
Not only is MyStaffSchedule readily accessible from computers and mobile devices, it requires very little technical knowledge, he said. Other scheduling software may require you to meet with an engineer who will build the schedule, a process that may take months to complete. MyStaffSchedule makes schedule creation fast and simple. The first time that users log in, a MyStaffSchedule wizard walks them through the steps to build their schedule in minutes.
“The idea is that anybody can register and start building their schedule,” Ricky said. “They can customize it just how they want without any interaction from our team.”
After using MyStaffSchedule, Krista said there’s no going back. The days of paper schedules, time-off request slips, and her phone blowing up with texts are long gone. MyStaffSchedule has made things easier for both her and her staff.
“I think if we took MyStaffSchedule away from my staff, they would revolt. They would not know what to do with themselves. They love it so much,” she said.
A patent is currently pending for the software. If you’re interested in a free trial of MyStaffSchedule or want to learn more, visit MyStaffSchedule.com.