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Nurse workforce scheduling in the emergency department: A sequential decision support system considering multiple objectives
Author(s) -
Ang Boon Yew,
Lam Shao Wei Sean,
Pasupathy Yogeswary,
Ong Marcus Eng Hock
Publication year - 2018
Publication title -
journal of nursing management
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.925
H-Index - 76
eISSN - 1365-2834
pISSN - 0966-0429
DOI - 10.1111/jonm.12560
Subject(s) - workload , integer programming , emergency department , decision support system , computer science , nurse scheduling problem , scheduling (production processes) , goal programming , workforce , operations research , workforce management , nursing , operations management , schedule , job shop scheduling , medicine , artificial intelligence , mathematics , engineering , algorithm , flow shop scheduling , economics , economic growth , operating system
Aim We propose a nurse scheduling framework based on a set of performance measures that are aligned with multiple outcome measures. A case study for the emergency department is presented. Methods A total of 142,564 emergency department attendances over 1 year were included in this study. Operational requirements, constraints and historical workload data were translated into a mixed‐integer sequential goal programming model, which considers the following outcome measures: (1) nurse–patient ratios; (2) number of favourable/unfavourable shifts; and (3) dispersion of rest days. Computational studies compared the performance of the mixed‐integer sequential goal programming results with manually generated historical nurse schedules. Results The maximum nurse–patient ratio deviation against the target was approximately 10% compared to 47% generated by the historical rosters (a 10% deviation translates to approximately two nurses). An on‐line decision support system, which integrates shift preferences, staff databases and a workload forecasting module, was also developed. Conclusion A decision support system based on the mixed‐integer sequential goal programming modelling framework was proposed. The application of the model in a case study for an emergency department demonstrated improvements over existing manual scheduling methods. Implications for Nursing Management This study demonstrates a mathematical, programming‐based decision support system, which allows for managerial priorities and nurse preferences to be jointly considered in the automatic generation of nurse rosters.