Design of an Information System for optimizing the Programming of Nursing Work Shifts

Abstract

Health institutions operate twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. They face a demand that fluctuates daily. Unlike jobs with fixed hours and obligatory days off, in health, operational continuity is required. The allocation for nursing shifts generates a rotation of people for health services according to legal and casuistic guidelines. Assigning and planning shifts results in a workload that takes an average of five to six extra hours. Existing applications offer a partial solution because they do not consider the news and contingencies of a health service. A web application is presented that, given a list of nurses, historical shifts and restrictions, a work shift planning is generated. This application comes to support the current shift allocation method based on electronic spreadsheets. The development consists of two modules. The first module has a shift allocation algorithm developed in C ++ and the second module has a graphical interface. As a case study, a set of health services from Chile and Colombia was used. The services have a defined number of nurses, who work different shifts according to the role and need of the institution. The results obtained are similar to a historical one. The proposed system takes less time and delivers various files and parameters that can be useful for nurses, the service and the health institution.