Maximizing the efficiency of residents operating room scheduling: a case study at a teaching hospital

Abstract

Paper aims: To find efficient operation room scheduling for residents considering several resources constraints and ensuring a minimum number of surgeries for approval in the training program. Originality: We find no research in current literature addressing operation room resource allocation for residents training in order to meet legislation approval criteria. Research method: The number of procedures to be performed by each resident was defined by Brazilian legislation and by the rules obtained from interviews with the chief professor of a vascular hospital. To solve the allocation of doctors to surgeries planning problem, also addressed in literature as Master Surgical Schedule (MSS), we propose a mathematical programming approach. Main findings: The mathematical model showed that some of the current rules of resource availability bring about infeasible planning when trying to achieve the legislation quantitative rules for the residents training. Implications for theory and practice: The model allowed the decision maker to plan and schedule vascular surgeries in a better and faster way, through an automated system, instead of allocating residents to surgeries manually, which takes many hours per month. Furthermore, changing the input data in the proposed model can allow other hospitals or specialists to get efficient results in less time.