Best Practice: for Nurses Cancelling a Shift

As is life, a situation may arise where you are no longer able to work the shift that you have booked yourself in for.

So, let’s have a look at what happens when you cancel a shift.

Best practice when you need to cancel a shift

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You must cancel the shift on the platform. To do this simply log in and edit your shift and fill in the cancellation form.

Give the client a phone call and explain that you won’t be able to make the shift. Not only is this polite, but these are your clients after all, so calling them up is a smart move if you want to ensure a good relationship and future work.

Don’t leave it to the last minute. You should give at least 24 hours notice when cancelling a shift.

Why? Firstly, it is important that the client is given time to find replacement cover and secondly, your reliability rating is affected significantly more if you cancel within 24 hours of the shift starting.

What happens when you cancel a shift:

1) The shift is automatically re-posted to the platform.
2) The client receives an email notification
3) Your reliability rating goes down.

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Reliability Rating

Canceling a shift within 24 hours affects your reliability rating significantly more than if you gave good notice, decreasing it by 1 point. If you give at least 24 hours notice when you cancel, the rating is worked out by calculating your total amount of shifts cancelled, divided by the total amount of shifts you’ve worked.

So for example, if your reliability rating is 4.97 out of 5…  if you’ve worked 35 shifts, had one cancellation in the past and need to cancel your next shift, 2 divide 35 means your 5 rating would go down 0.06 to 4.91.

This is a crucial point to be aware of because a poor reliability rating might hinder your prospects of finding future work through the platform. As a guide, a rating below 4 is not ideal.

Be mindful, you will need to work your next shifts to pick it back up. Having a rating below 3 will potentially impact your ability to book further shifts on the platform.

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Good News

The good news is, the more shifts you work, the better your rating will be. The key thing to remember is to be diligent when you’re booking your shifts, check you are available and can get there, and leave cancelling as a last resort.