RosterMD · Phase 0 Discovery · Confidential

Doctor Rostering
Discovery Interview

We're building a tool to eliminate the pain of doctor scheduling. Your experience shapes the product. This takes approximately 20–25 minutes.

Confidential ~25 min Auto-saved as you type Submitted securely

Before we begin

Tell us a little about yourself. This helps us segment responses by seniority and hospital type.

Progress 0%
A
Your Department
Scale and structure of the rostering environment.
How many doctors are in the roster pool for your primary department?
What is the rostering cycle length?
How far ahead does each roster cover? When is it published relative to the start date?
B
Current Rostering Workflow
Walk us through how you build a roster today — every step, every tool, every pain point.
Walk us through your current process from start to finish.
Start from Day 1 — what's your very first action when building a new roster?
Most important question
What tools do you currently use?
Excel, paper, shared drives, hospital system, WhatsApp groups, email — list everything.
Where does the time actually go?
Roughly how is the total roster-building time distributed across these activities?
What is the single most painful moment in the whole process?
Critical
What breaks most often? What do you have to manually fix at the last minute?
Have you ever had a roster cause a complaint from staff? What happened?
C
Scheduling Constraints
The rules that govern a valid roster. This feeds directly into the scheduling engine.
What are the shift types in your department?
List all shift types with their hours.
Technical input
Coverage rules — what is the minimum required per shift?
Technical input
Are there specialty-mix requirements per shift?
e.g. Must have at least one cardiologist on call over the weekend.
Rules around consecutive shifts and rest periods
What are the hard limits? e.g. No doctor works more than 3 night shifts in a row, minimum 10 hours rest between shifts.
Technical input
Maximum on-call frequency per doctor per month
Which constraints are regulatory vs hospital policy vs personal preference?
This determines what we hard-code vs make configurable.
Technical input
What makes a roster "good" vs just "valid"?
The unwritten judgment call you apply that no rule book captures.
Product insight
How are leave requests submitted and managed?
When do doctors submit leave? Is there a system or is it ad hoc? What happens when requests clash?
D
Last-Minute Replacements
When a doctor cannot make their shift — how is that handled today?
Walk us through exactly what happens when a doctor calls in sick.
From the moment you receive the call — what do you do, step by step?
Critical
How long does finding a replacement typically take?
How many doctors do you typically need to contact before finding a replacement?
Do you have a priority order for who you contact first?
e.g. Most junior available first? Same specialty? Fewest shifts that month?
What channels do you use to find replacements?
Have you ever failed to fill a shift in time? What happened?
Product insight
If a system automatically contacted eligible doctors and assigned the first to confirm — would you trust it?
What conditions would need to be true for you to trust an automated replacement system?
Validation
E
The Ideal Outcome
What does success look like for you personally and for your department?
If this tool worked perfectly, what would your role in rostering look like?
Product insight
Would you want to review and approve the final roster, or trust the system to publish directly?
No right answer — this shapes how much human-in-the-loop we build.
What would you need to see in a prototype to feel confident showing it to your department head?
Validation
F
Hospital Adoption
Understanding the internal path from prototype to formal pilot.
Who else in the hospital would need to be comfortable with this tool before it could be used beyond your department?
Critical
Is there an IT governance or vendor approval process we should be aware of?
e.g. Security questionnaires, data residency requirements, approval timelines.
Are you aware of any tools the hospital has evaluated for rostering before?
What happened to them? Why didn't they work?
What data would the system need to store about each doctor?
e.g. Name, MCR number, specialty, seniority, contact number, leave entitlement.
Technical input
G
The Commitment Question
One question. The most important one.
🎯 Final Validation
If we build RosterMD and it works well for your next roster cycle — are you willing to introduce us to the relevant person at your hospital (IT, ops, or department head) to explore a formal pilot agreement?
If yes with conditions, or unsure — what would need to be true?
Anything else we haven't asked that would be useful for us to know?
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Thank you — responses received.

Your answers have been submitted securely and will be used to shape the RosterMD product specification. The team will be in touch if we have follow-up questions.

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