Fatigue and award rules in hospital medical rosters

Every Australian and New Zealand hospital roster sits under two sets of rules: the industrial ones in the award or enterprise agreement (maximum ordinary hours, overtime triggers, minimum breaks between shifts, penalty rates) and the safety ones in fatigue frameworks such as the AMA safe hours guidance and state health department policies (consecutive nights, recovery days, maximum shift length). Rostering software earns its keep by enforcing both while the roster is being built, not by reporting breaches after the fact. Note: this page describes how HosPortal encodes rules; it is not legal or industrial advice, and the rules themselves come from your agreement and policy.

The rules a roster has to hold

• Hours: ordinary hours per week and per payroll period; overtime thresholds; averaging across a cycle.
• Rest: minimum break between shifts (commonly 8 or 10 hours); rest after a night block; a post-call recovery day.
• Sequences: maximum consecutive days or nights; maximum weekends per month; no clinical session after an on-call night.
• Cover: minimum staffing and skill mix by time of day; supervision ratios for trainees.
• Fairness: even distribution of nights, weekends and public holidays over the year.

How HosPortal enforces them

• Work Rules cap hours across days, weeks and payroll cycles and define rest between shifts; you write them once in plain terms (no more than 38 ordinary hours a week, at least 10 hours between shifts) and they apply to every build.
• Shift Conflict Rules stop specific sequences: a list the morning after on-call, more than three consecutive nights, two weekends in a row.
• Supervision rules require senior cover where trainees are rostered.
• Flagged before publishing. Breaches show on the draft roster, in self-roster windows as staff pick shifts, and in the AI builder, which treats hard rules as constraints it will not break.
• Timesheets that agree with the roster. Award-based break and overtime rules are applied to timesheets, so what was rostered, what was worked and what is paid line up.
• Reports for compliance. Hours, breaches and exceptions over any period, exportable for the department or the safe hours committee.

See Roster Rules and Timesheets for the features, and the guide Why hospital timesheets create payroll friction.

Frequently asked questions