Holiday calendar for hospitals

Two calendars inside one hospital

Office departments such as HR, accounts and purchase follow a normal holiday list: the national holidays, a set of festival holidays for your state and a couple of optional ones. Round-the-clock departments follow the roster. For a staff nurse, Diwali is a date on which she is either rostered on duty or rostered off. Apply the holiday to ward departments too, and let the roster decide who works: those rostered off enjoy the paid holiday, and those on duty earn comp-off from the worked holiday.

OPD usually closes on national holidays and on the main festival of the region, while casualty stays open around the clock. Publish OPD closure dates to patients and consultants a month ahead, and roster only the front office and nursing staff needed to handle walk-in emergencies and admissions from casualty.

Rotating holiday duty fairly

The complaint every nursing office hears is that the same people work every Diwali. Keep a simple holiday duty register per ward showing who worked Holi, Diwali, Christmas and New Year over the last two years, and give first preference to those who worked the festival last time. Split big festivals between teams: one team gets Diwali day, the other gets Bhai Dooj. Publish the festival duty roster at least a month ahead so staff can book travel, and check the day grid in Shifts & Roster to confirm every unit still has its minimum cover.

Worked example: Diwali duty on a 12-nurse ward

Ward 4B has 12 nurses and needs 4 in the morning, 3 in the evening and 2 at night, so 9 nurses work on Diwali and 3 are off. The 3 who worked last Diwali get this one off. Each of the 9 on duty earns one comp-off, 9 in total, to be taken within the expiry period. On Bhai Dooj the ward again needs 9, so the 3 who were off on Diwali are on duty that day, along with 6 who are not due a festival off. Over the festival week, every nurse either gets a festival day off or a comp-off.

Optional holidays and unit-wise lists

Hospital staff come from many states and faiths. Instead of a long list of closed days, many hospitals keep a short fixed list and let each person pick two or three optional holidays, such as Onam, Bakrid, Guru Nanak Jayanti, Chhath, Pongal or Good Friday. ZeniaHR supports optional holidays with a yearly pick limit and a report of who picked which one, which the ward sister reads before building that week's roster.

A group with units in Mumbai, Kochi and Kolkata cannot use one list, because Gudi Padwa, Onam and Durga Puja matter in one unit and not the others. Create holidays once, tag regional ones to the branches where they apply, and mark recurring yearly holidays. Holidays feed attendance, the leave sandwich rules and payroll, so check the tags before the first payroll of the year, and check your state's festival holiday rules for the number of paid holidays.

How to set it up in ZeniaHR

1. Create the year's holidays in Holiday Calendars under the right category: national, public, regional, religious, company or optional.
2. Tag regional holidays to the hospital units and clinic branches where they apply, and mark recurring yearly ones.
3. Apply holidays to ward departments as well, so staff rostered on a holiday earn comp-off from the worked holiday.
4. Set a yearly pick limit for optional holidays and ask staff to pick theirs before the festival rosters are drafted.
5. Post the festival duty roster on the Company Wall for the wards concerned, as an announcement that staff acknowledge.

Read more about holiday calendars in ZeniaHR.

Roles this applies to

Frequently asked questions