Room Shifts

In some rooms, one doctor or one service holds the room for part of the day, and someone else takes it after them. A GI room might run a morning list from 07:30 to 13:00 and an afternoon list from 15:00 to 19:45. Room shifts tell Theator about these planned hours. Each shift is a planned window of time in one room, such as Morning 07:30-13:00, with an optional owner: a doctor or a service.

Theator measures each room against the time it was planned to work. Utilization, overtime and on-time starts are measured per shift, and the time between two shifts is never counted as a turnover.

This article explains who can set room shifts, how to set them each week and for a single date, and what they change on Room Analytics.

Who Is This For?

• Admins and Facility Admins who set up their hospital's rooms. Facility Admins see and edit only the rooms of their own site.
• Everyone who reads Room Analytics and wants to know how shifts change utilization and turnover.

Where to Find It

1. In the left sidebar, expand Admin tools and select Clinical Configuration. The breadcrumb reads Organization › Clinical Configuration.
2. Select the Room shifts tab.

You can also go directly to app.theator.io/organization/clinical-configuration?tab=room-shifts.

On a phone, the tab lists each room's weekly shifts, read-only, with the line Edit room shifts on a computer.

How Theator Picks a Room's Shifts for a Day

For each room and day, Theator uses the first of these that exists:

1. A change for that date (see Change Shifts for One Date below).
2. The room's weekly shifts.

A room-day with neither has no planned shifts. Depending on your hospital's data, Theator then either splits the day where the lead doctor changes, or counts the day as one window. A room with no weekly shifts says which in its row: No planned shifts. Each day is split where the lead doctor changes. or No planned shifts. Each day counts as one window.

Whatever owner you set, the shift's doctor is taken from that day's cases. A doctor swap on the day doesn't need a change for a date.

Hover over the ⓘ next to the tab's first line for a short version of this section.

Set Weekly Shifts

Weekly shifts shows a grid with one row per room and one column per weekday, Sunday to Saturday. Each cell lists that day's shifts, for example 07:30-13:00, or — when there are none. Times are in your hospital's local time, and the line under the grid names the time zone. Use Search rooms… and the room type list to find rooms.

Add or Edit Shifts

1. Select a cell to edit that room on that weekday. To set several rooms at once, select Add shifts at the top and choose them under Rooms. Rooms you ticked in the grid are already chosen.
2. Under Days, tick the weekdays these shifts apply to. When you open a cell, the other weekdays with the same shifts are already ticked.
3. For each shift, set:
   • a name, such as Morning: up to 24 characters, and different from the day's other shifts;
   • a start and an end, in 5-minute steps. For a shift that runs past midnight, tick Ends next day;
   • an owner, if you want one: No owner, Service (type the service, such as Gastroenterology) or Doctor (search your hospital's doctors).
4. To plan a break inside a shift, such as a cleaning slot, select Add a break under the shift and set its start and end. Shifts have no breaks unless you add them.
5. To add another shift on the same days, select Add a shift.
6. Select Done. The shifts go into your draft. Nothing is saved yet.

The dialog checks each shift and shows what to fix before you can continue:

Copy or Clear a Room's Week

Select ⋯ next to a room's name:

• Copy to rooms… copies the room's whole week to the rooms you choose. It replaces their weekly shifts, and the dialog names the rooms it replaces.
• Clear week removes the room's weekly shifts.

Both change only your draft until you save.

Import Shifts From a CSV File

To enter many rooms at once, select Import CSV, then Choose a CSV file. Select Download a sample. for a file to start from.

The file has one row per shift, and its first row must be:

room,weekday,name,start,end,owner_kind,owner,breaks

When no shift in the file has a break, you can leave out the breaks column.

The file must be UTF-8 text, at most 1 MB and 5,000 rows. Theator reads it and reports, for example, 38 shifts ready for 12 rooms. 2 rows need fixing. Each row to fix is listed with the reason, for example Row 14: no room named "GI 13". Select Add to the draft to put the shifts that are ready into the grid, and you save them from there. Each room with at least one shift ready gets a new week made of only its ready shifts, so fix the rows that need fixing and import the file again before you save. A room whose rows all need fixing keeps its weekly shifts.

Save Your Changes

Your edits stay in a draft. While you have unsaved changes, a bar at the bottom of the tab reads, for example, Unsaved changes for 3 rooms. Select Discard to drop them, or Save… to save them.

In Save room shifts, choose Apply from:

• Today: days before today keep the shifts they had, so their numbers don't change.
• A date: any date up to a year back or a year ahead. When you pick a past date, the days from that date are measured again with the new shifts, and the dialog says Numbers for those days change.

Select Save. Theator confirms with, for example, Room shifts saved for 3 rooms. Numbers from Mon Oct 19, 2026 use them.

If you try to leave the tab with unsaved changes, Theator asks Leave without saving? first. If someone else saved room shifts while you were editing, the tab says Someone else changed these room shifts. Reload to see their changes; yours are kept until you leave.

Change Shifts for One Date

For a holiday, a maintenance day or an extra list, add a change for that date. The room's weekly shifts stay as they are.

1. At the top of the tab, select Changes for a date. The number next to it counts the changes from today on.
2. Select Add a change for a date.
3. Choose the dates with From and To, up to 31 days, and choose the Rooms.
4. Under That day, choose one:
   • Use these shifts, then set the day's shifts as in the weekly dialog. To close one shift and keep the others, tick Closed on that shift.
   • Closed all day, when the room doesn't work that day.
5. Add a Note if you want one, such as Washer maintenance, up to 120 characters.
6. Select Save.

A change for a date is saved straight away, apart from the weekly draft. The list shows each change's Date, Room, That day and Note, with Edit and Delete. Past changes are hidden; select Show past changes to see them.

You can add a change for a date up to a year back, for example to record a day a room was closed. The numbers for that day change.

What Room Shifts Change

These numbers are on Room Analytics › Efficiency. Open Surgical Excellence in the left sidebar and select Room Analytics.

Utilization

Utilization is the share of planned room time with a patient in the room. Planned room time is your shifts, minus their planned breaks. Only room time inside the shifts counts.

Room-days with planned shifts are left out of the Prime-time use tile, which measures a fixed 07:00-17:00 window on workdays. Utilization measures those days against their own shifts instead.

Overtime

Overtime is the minutes the last patient stayed in the room after the shift's planned end. It is the average over the shifts that ran past their end. Minutes that a shift runs into the gap before the next shift count as overtime.

First Starts on Time

With planned shifts, First starts on time compares the first patient in the room in each shift with that shift's planned start, or with the first case's booked start when that is later. A shift starts on time if its first patient is in the room no later than 5 minutes after that time. For example, a shift planned from 07:30 whose first case is booked for 08:00 starts on time if the patient is in the room by 08:05.

Room Turnover and Time Between Procedures

A gap between two shifts is never a turnover, however short it is. Say a room's Morning shift ends at 13:00 and its Afternoon shift starts at 13:30. The morning's last patient leaves at 12:55 and the afternoon's first patient enters at 13:35. Without shifts, those 40 minutes would count as a Room turnover. With shifts, they don't, and neither does the matching gap in Time between procedures.

A gap that runs through a planned break isn't counted as a turnover either.

The time between two shifts in the same room is called Between shifts. It isn't counted as room use, room empty or idle.

Rooms With No Planned Shifts

Where Theator splits a room's day where the lead doctor changes, the gap at each split isn't counted as a turnover either. Those shifts have no plan, so they get no Utilization, Overtime or First starts on time.

The By Shift View

On the Efficiency tab, next to By Room and By Facility, By Shift shows one row per room and shift, with the shift's Cases, Utilization, Overtime, First starts on time, Room turnover and Time between procedures. By Shift appears only when at least one room in your selection had shifts in the date range. Other tabs group by room or facility only.

• Rows for planned shifts carry the shift's name, such as Morning.
• Rows for shifts split where the lead doctor changed read First, Second or Third or later. Their Utilization, Overtime and First starts on time show —. Hover over it to see Needs planned room time.

Common Questions

We changed our rota. Do last month's numbers change? Only if you choose a past date under Apply from. With Today, every day before today keeps the shifts it had.

A different doctor took the morning list today. Do I need to change anything? No. The shift's doctor is taken from that day's cases.

Who can see and change room shifts? Admins and Facility Admins can open the Room shifts tab. Facility Admins see and edit only their own site's rooms. The numbers measured with shifts show on Room Analytics to everyone who can open it.

Why don't I see By Shift? By Shift is on the Efficiency tab only, and only when at least one room in your selection had shifts in the date range.

Why is Utilization a dash for some shifts? Those shifts were split where the lead doctor changed, so there is no planned time to measure against. Add weekly shifts for the room to measure it.

What's Next?

• Room Analytics Dashboard — The Efficiency tab and how each of its numbers is measured
• Managing Your Organization — Users, roles and organization settings