For charge nurses + house supervisors
The shift is judgment.
The math should be visible.
Acuity-aware assignment boards, equity dashboards, audit logs, and handoff snapshots — designed by working charge nurses around how a real shift evolves, not how a spreadsheet thinks it should.
Download now
Live now on the App Store and Google Play.
What the shift actually is
Six things every charge nurse navigates between 0700 and 1900.
We built tools for each of them — and just as importantly, we left out the things charge nursing should keep doing in your head.
- 1
Make assignments that hold up after 0300
Acuity-aware drag-and-drop with skill-mix awareness. The board flags imbalances the moment they appear — not after the third complaint at change-of-shift.
- 2
Defend the assignment when it gets challenged
Every move is timestamped and reasoned. The audit log is built for the meeting after the shift, not for surveillance during it.
- 3
Stay on top of admits, transfers, and discharges
Bed-flow lane parallel to the assignment lane. New admit lands, assignment-board math updates, you see who has bandwidth before the unit secretary calls.
- 4
Cover breaks without dropping the world
Break planner with cross-coverage suggestions based on patient acuity at that moment, not at the start of shift.
- 5
Hand off cleanly to the next charge
One-tap handoff snapshot: who has what, what changed in the last 4 hours, the three things you wish you had time to fix.
- 6
Spot equity drift before staff do
Equity dashboard — visible to charge only — surfaces patterns: who keeps getting the heaviest assignments, who keeps getting the freshest admits.
The tools
Built around the way a real shift evolves.
Charge tool
Assignment Board
Build fairer nurse assignments with acuity, breaks, handoff, and pairings — local-only shift planning.
Open the tool →On the roadmap
Break planner
Cross-coverage suggestions based on patient acuity right now — not at the start of shift. Targets v1.5.
On the roadmap
Acuity engine v2
Per-unit weight tuning UI + live AACN/ANA reference overlay. Targets v1.5.
What we got right
Four things charge nurses asked us to hold the line on.
Charge nurses helped design it
Two of our clinical advisory RNs work as charge / house-supervisor. The acuity weights and the equity flags come from the way they actually run a shift.
Patient names stay on the board
The assignment board is local-only. Patient identifiers never leave the device unless you opt into multi-device sync, and the audit log scrubs names from the export.
Built for the 30-second window
Charge nurses get 30 seconds between interruptions. Reassignments are one drag. Acuity changes are one tap. Nothing is more than two levels deep.
It does not replace your judgment
The acuity score is decision-support, not a decision. You stay accountable for the assignment. The tool just makes the math visible.
Frequently asked
About the charge tools.
How does the acuity score work?
A weighted composite of mobility, fall risk, drips, isolation, telemetry status, code status, and pending procedures. Each unit can tune the weights. We default to AACN/ANA frameworks but the per-unit overrides are saved in the local config — your DNS / nurse manager doesn’t have to re-explain "our ICU works different" every shift.
Will it auto-make assignments for me?
No. The board suggests balance moves, but the assignment is yours. We deliberately left the auto-assign feature out because charge nursing is judgment, not math. The tool surfaces the math so you can override it on purpose.
Does it integrate with the EHR?
Not in v1. Hospital EHR integration is months of compliance work and we won’t cut corners there. The board reads from your manual census or a CSV import, and it’s designed to live alongside the EHR rather than replace it.
Who can see the equity dashboard?
Only the charge nurse on the device. It’s not pushed to management or staff. We designed it as a self-audit tool — so you catch your own drift before staff have to point it out.
What happens at handoff to the next charge?
One-tap snapshot exports a handoff brief: current assignment, pending admits, acuity flags, the three open issues you mark "next charge needs to know". Local export only — no cloud handoff in v1.
Now available
Try charge tools on your phone.
RN PocketPal is live now on the App Store and Google Play.