A Flexible Mixed Integer Programming framework for Nurse Scheduling

TL;DR

This paper introduces a flexible mixed integer programming model for nurse scheduling that optimizes hospital requirements and nurse preferences, enhancing automation and efficiency in ward staffing.

Contribution

It presents a novel MIP framework that incorporates flexibility for nurse transfers and additional hospital policies, improving scheduling effectiveness.

Findings

Model successfully automates nurse scheduling in a general ward.

Optimizes both hospital requirements and nurse preferences.

Solves scheduling problems quickly using AIMMS.

Abstract

In this paper, a nurse-scheduling model is developed using mixed integer programming model. It is deployed to a general care ward to replace and automate the current manual approach for scheduling. The developed model differs from other similar studies in that it optimizes both hospitals requirement as well as nurse preferences by allowing flexibility in the transfer of nurses from different duties. The model also incorporated additional policies which are part of the hospitals requirement but not part of the legislations. Hospitals key primary mission is to ensure continuous ward care service with appropriate number of nursing staffs and the right mix of nursing skills. The planning and scheduling is done to avoid additional non essential cost for hospital. Nurses preferences are taken into considerations such as the number of night shift and consecutive rest days. We will also reformulate problems from another paper which considers the penalty objective using the model but without the flexible components. The models are built using AIMMS which solves the problem in very short amount of time.