Nurse scheduling by fuzzy goal programming

Abstract

This paper develops a fuzzy goal programming model to plan and allocate nurses to hospital wards. It is applied to a hospital ward in Kerman, Iran. The monthly schedule developed by the proposed model takes into account both hospital objectives and nurses' preferences. First, the nurses' preferences are obtained via a questionnaire. Then, the objectives and the nurses' preferences are divided into two major parts in the proposed model: hard constraints and fuzzy goals. The resulting schedule, by solving the proposed model, is implemented and is much preferred to the current schedule. Moreover, the proposed model is easily applicable, takes a short time to solve, and can be extended to include other objectives or preferences. Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2010.