The multi-objective nurse scheduling problem: A case study of private hospital in Thailand

Abstract

Nurse scheduling is one of the most important tasks that greatly affects the performance of nurses. Ineffective scheduling may lead to health and mental problems – caused by lack of adequate rest and work stress – as well as burnout and job quitting. To avoid a costly process of recruiting and selecting appropriate medical personnel, efficient nurse scheduling is therefore needed; and we achieve this by help of a mixed-integer linear programming model. We expect that this approach would help reduce the planning time, as well as the errors pertaining to the current scheduling method, while increasing scheduling fairness, which is typically neglected in practice. In doing so, we have first collected all necessary data from experience nurses and, later, transformed them into a mathematical formulation model with three different objectives: (i) to reduce the excess cost of operating nurses, (ii) to increase workload equity, and (iii) to increase nurse’s satisfaction measured by reducing constraint violations. This model test was conducted through a small problem. Then, the results were used to validate the accuracy of both objectives and constraints in order to be a guideline for the construction of a nurse scheduling program in the future.