A conceptualisation of a strategy to shiftwork scheduling optimisation in an emergency department

Abstract

Shiftwork schedule is required to provide uninterrupted service for the hospital emergency department. There are many limitations with the manual shiftwork scheduling applied at the University of Malaya Medical Centre Emergency Department (UMMC-ED). We propose an alternative shiftwork scheduling strategy to solve these limitations which consists of three modes; Initialization, Sufficient and Insufficient mode. These modes detect the imbalance between workforce and workload which enable the appropriate distribution according to the demands of individual staff. We developed a tool, Trauma Hospital Online Roster (THOR) that implements the above strategy.