A Shift Sequence for Nurse Scheduling Using Linear Programming Problem

Abstract

The Nurse scheduling problem (NSP) of this paper is to study and analyze the scheduling process in practice, and propose models and heuristics to improve both the process and the quality of the resulting schedule. Nurses should benefit from this study by having higher quality schedules while the employees in charge of scheduling should enjoy the positive benefits of an optimization tool to solve problem related to healthcare, which should guide their work and is certainly superior to suit and fallacy. The objective is to maximize the fairness of the schedule. This paper illustrates how the linear programming solves the nurses scheduling problem and how it has been effectively used in hospitals. A numerical illustration example of nurse scheduling for 8 hour shift is presented and the optimum solution is solved by Excel solver Keywords: Nurse scheduling (NSP), Linear Programming Problem (LPP), Constraints, Objective function.