How seniority and senior/junior mix work

Every doctor is Senior or Junior, and shifts can require a minimum number of seniors — here’s how that level is used across scheduling.

Every doctor profile has a Level: Senior or Junior. It’s a single field, but it feeds several parts of scheduling.

This page describes the standard Senior/Junior model. Some organisations instead use configurable Staffing Roles, with more than two levels and a rank on each. If a doctor’s profile shows a Staffing Role field instead of Level, your organisation is on that model.

Where seniority is used

Shift coverage

A shift’s Min Seniors Required sets how many of its required doctors must be Senior. This is a hard constraint.

Senior-to-junior ratio

On organisations using the advanced scheduling engine, shifts can require a defined ratio — for example, one senior for every three juniors. Also a hard constraint. See Roster constraints.

Assignment order

The engine’s first solving pass assigns senior doctors before filling remaining slots — see Solver behaviour.

On the calendar

Senior doctors are marked with an asterisk (*) next to their name, so you can confirm the ratio on any given day at a glance.

If a shift can’t meet its senior requirement

If there aren’t enough active, eligible senior doctors to satisfy every shift’s Min Seniors Required or ratio across the period, generation fails — this is one of the more common failure causes on smaller teams. See Duty Plan generation failed.

Next steps

Update a doctor's profile

Set or correct a doctor’s Level.

Coverage requirements

How Required Doctors and Min Seniors Required work together.