Shiftpup guide ·
How to put a nurse or hospital shift schedule in your calendar
Give every shift its own start and end date: a 7:00 pm night shift on Friday ends at 7:00 am on Saturday, so it belongs to both days. Shiftpup for iPhone reads the ward rota or schedule on your phone, finds your row, carries each night shift's end into the next morning for you to check, and adds your shifts to Apple Calendar. By hand, use timed events, never all-day ones, and set the end date before the end time.
What a typical schedule turns into
Hospital schedules mix a few patterns. Here's how some fictional shifts look once they're in a calendar:
| On the schedule | In your calendar |
|---|---|
| Early, Mon 19 Oct, 7:00 am–3:30 pm | Mon 19 Oct, 7:00 am to Mon 19 Oct, 3:30 pm |
| Long day, Tue 20 Oct, 07:00–19:30 | Tue 20 Oct, 07:00 to Tue 20 Oct, 19:30 |
| Night, Fri 23 Oct, 19:00–07:30 | Fri 23 Oct, 19:00 to Sat 24 Oct, 07:30 |
| Three nights from Mon 26 Oct | Three events: Mon to Tue, Tue to Wed, Wed to Thu, each ending in the morning |
Use your unit's real times, handover included. If nights run 19:00 to 07:30, that's the event, not a tidy 12 hours.
With Shiftpup for iPhone
- Snap the ward rota or choose a screenshot of your schedule. Pip reads it on your iPhone. It's never uploaded, which matters when the rota lists the whole team.
- Who are you? Tap your name or type it. Only your shifts come through, and coworkers' names never go into your calendar.
- Check each shift. Night shifts that end the next morning are added across both days; look at the end date on each one. When a time has no am or pm, Pip asks.
- Add to Calendar. Set an alert in your job's settings, such as two hours before each shift, and add the hospital as the job's location.
Picking up agency or bank shifts somewhere else? Shiftpup Pro keeps several jobs in one week with clashes marked; see two jobs, one calendar.
With the web version
Without an iPhone, the web version reads one week of your shifts from a photo or screenshot, and a night that starts on the last day of the week can end the following morning. Crop out colleagues' rows before uploading if you can: the photo goes through our server to OpenAI for reading, after you agree (privacy details).
By hand
In Calendar, tap +, turn All-day off and set the start. Then change the end date to the next morning before you set the end time, so Calendar never sees an end before the start. Add an alert, and the hospital's address as the location so Maps can work out your travel time.
Things that trip people up
- Which day a night belongs to. Most schedules put a night under the day it starts; a few put it under the day it ends. If "Sat N" could mean either, ask.
- Codes. D, LD, N, E, L, SD, AL, OFF: every ward has its own key. If your schedule shows only codes, add the times yourself when you check each shift.
- Clocks that change mid-night. In the UK the clocks go back at 02:00 on Sunday 25 October 2026, and in the US at 2:00 am on Sunday 1 November, so a 19:00–07:00 night that weekend runs 13 hours. In spring the same night runs 11: Sunday 14 March 2027 in the US, Sunday 28 March in the UK. Calendar keeps the clock times right. Don't use it to work out pay or hours.
- Requests versus the final rota. Add shifts from the published rota, not the request sheet. Requests change.
- On-call. If you add on-call periods, title them clearly so they don't look like a shift you have to turn up for.
- The day after nights. Some people add an all-day "post-nights" marker for the day after a run of nights, so nobody books them in for lunch.
Common questions
Should a night shift be an all-day event?
No. An all-day event hides when you start and finish, and it sits on one date. Use a timed event that ends the next morning. The overnight shifts guide has more examples, including shifts that end at midnight.
Our e-rostering system can export to a calendar. Should I use that instead?
Yes, if it can: an export or sync can follow changes to the rota. Use a photo or screenshot when the rota only exists as a printout or an image.
The rota changed after I added it. What now?
Snap the new one. Shiftpup won't add the same shift twice, and Pro's What changed compares the new rota with the week you added. The changed-schedule checklist covers doing it by hand.