Multi-objective Nurse Scheduling Models with Patient Workload and Nurse Preferences

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to develop a nurse scheduling model that simultaneously addresses a set of mu ltip le and oftentimes conflict ing objectives in determin ing an optimal nurse schedule. The ob jectives we consider are minimizing nurse labor costs, min imizing patient d issatisfaction, minimizing nurse idle time, and maximizing job satisfaction. We formulate a series of mu lti-objective b inary integer programming models for the nurse scheduling problem where both nurse shift preferences as a pro xy fo r job satisfaction and patient workload as a pro xy for patient dissatisfaction are considered in our models. A two-stage non-weighted goal programming solution method is provided to find an efficient solution that addresses the multip le objectives. Nu merical results show that considering patient workload in the optimization models can make positive impacts in nurse scheduling by (1) imp roving nurse utilization while keeping higher nurse job satisfaction and (2) min imizing unsatisfied patient workloads.