A night-shift nurse learning coding to build a shift swap app
Hi Product Hunt, I'm a night-shift nurse in Manchester, and over the past year, I've been teaching myself to code in my spare time. My first proper product is Swapboard, a little app where ward staff can offer and take shift swaps without having to exchange WhatsApp messages all over the place.
I made it in frustration. Our rota updates weekly, and swaps get lost in group chats. Three coworkers are currently using a prototype, and one of them wanted a feature I would never have thought of: an alert if a swap would make her work six consecutive nights.
I'm using a vibe coding library to build the majority of the UI, and to be honest, I'm a little skeptical about how much I should trust it for anything that will touch staff data.
Anyone who has developed for healthcare or shift work, what should a beginner watch out for first?
Replies
Hi Sidra, welcome. A weekly rota with swaps buried in group chats, I get why you built it. Your coworker's six-nights alert is the kind of thing I would never come up with either. I haven't done anything in healthcare so I'll stay out of the data question. My own kanban tool started the same way though, Trello's free plan ran out on me. Good luck!