Visualizing Appointment Distribution by Weekday#

Displays the percentage of appointments by day of the week, helping to identify which weekdays experience the highest patient activity or service demand. This plot is particularly useful for validating scheduling patterns and operational balance across the week.

Function Overview#

Function: medscheduler.utils.plotting.plot_weekday_appointment_distribution(df)

Inputs:

  • df (pd.DataFrame) — Appointments table containing an appointment_date column (datetime-like or convertible).

Returns: matplotlib.axes.Axes — Bar chart representing the weekday share of total appointments.

Validation & error handling:

  • Missing appointment_date column → raises ValueError("DataFrame must contain an 'appointment_date' column.").

  • Non-datetime data in appointment_date → coerced to datetime with pd.to_datetime(errors='coerce').

Output Description#

  • X-axis: Ordered weekdays (Monday → Sunday).

  • Y-axis: Percentage of total appointments on each weekday.

  • Bars: Show normalized proportions (0–100%) for each day.

  • Color scheme: Secondary Medscheduler orange (#f9a369).

  • Annotations: Percentage values displayed above each bar.

  • Style: Clean grid layout, left-aligned title, no top/right spines, and proportional bar widths for clarity.

This visualization allows administrators or analysts to verify whether appointment load is balanced throughout the week or concentrated on certain days.

Example#

from medscheduler import AppointmentScheduler
from medscheduler.utils.plotting import plot_weekday_appointment_distribution

# Generate synthetic appointment data
sched = AppointmentScheduler()
slots_df, appts_df, patients_df = sched.generate()

# Visualize weekday appointment distribution
ax = plot_weekday_appointment_distribution(appts_df)
ax.figure.show()  # optional when running interactively

Output preview:
The bar chart below depicts the percentage distribution of appointments across weekdays. It highlights which days of the week have the highest and lowest scheduling activity within the simulated dataset.

Weekday Appointment Distribution#

Next Steps#

On this page
Show Source