Locum shifts,
booked in minutes
Locum West places doctors into shifts across Western Australia's hospitals and clinics. I led the doctors app from a blank page to a real, working product: finding shifts, booking them, managing compliance documents, and getting paid, plus the admin side the agency runs it from.
Locum doctors picking up shifts across WA hospitals were doing it the old way: phone calls, spreadsheets, and paperwork chased down separately from the actual booking. Locum West wanted a single app where a doctor could find a shift, book it, and have their compliance documents already on file when they showed up.
I designed the doctors app end to end, shift discovery, booking, document upload and verification, and payment tracking, alongside an admin side for the team placing doctors into shifts. I took it from first sketch to an actual working app, then handed the design over to another designer when I moved on to my next role.
Booking a shift
shouldn't need a phone call
Doctors work irregular hours and move between facilities constantly. Every extra step between seeing a shift and being booked into it was a shift that went to someone else.
Shift discovery was manual
- Shifts circulated by phone and word of mouth
- No way for a doctor to see what was available right now
- Good shifts filled before most doctors even heard about them
Compliance chased separately
- AHPRA registration, insurance, police checks tracked outside the booking
- Documents expired quietly, discovered only at placement time
- Admin staff chasing paperwork instead of filling shifts
Two very different users
- Doctors need speed, on a phone, between shifts
- Agency admins need oversight of every shift and every doctor at once
- Both had to work off the same live shift and compliance data
Goals
- Let a doctor find and book a shift in the app, start to finish
- Bring compliance documents into the booking flow, not a separate chase
- Give admins one live view of shifts, doctors, and payments
- Design it to be handed to another designer cleanly, since I knew I'd be moving on
Research
- Doctors book between shifts, on a phone, in short bursts of attention
- A shift they can't complete because of an expired document costs trust fast
- Admins wanted exceptions surfaced, not a wall of every shift ever booked
- Clean documentation mattered because the design would outlive my time on it
Strategy into
interface
Shift discovery & booking
A live feed of available shifts a doctor can filter by location and date, book in a few taps, with confirmation and shift details in the same flow.
Compliance &
document tracking
AHPRA registration, insurance, and police checks upload once and stay attached to the doctor's profile, with expiry flagged before it becomes a blocked booking.
Admin console
A single view for the placement team: shifts filling, doctors due for compliance renewal, and payments moving, so exceptions surface instead of hiding in a list.
- Folding compliance into the booking flow removed a whole category of stalled shifts
- Designing a two-sided marketplace means the admin side is half the product, not an afterthought
- Knowing you'll hand a project off changes how you document decisions, for the better
- Busy professionals reward interfaces that respect short attention windows
Conclusion
A booking process that ran on phone calls and chased paperwork became an app doctors use to find and book shifts in minutes, with compliance handled before it ever becomes a problem. I took it from a blank page to a real product in the hands of real doctors, then handed it off in a state the next designer could pick up without missing a step.
