An assessment of the integration of nurse timetable changes with operating room planning and scheduling

Abstract

The objective of this paper is to understand the links between the management of operating rooms and nurses, and to investigate the trade-offs between the number of operating rooms used, nurses used and overtime work. To do so, we proposed a model that plans and schedules surgical interventions in the operating rooms while considering the availabilities of surgeons and anesthesiologists; the model also includes or discards nurse scheduling. The flexible modeling approach allows us to compare different alternatives, each one representing a different scenario of managing the operating rooms at an operational level. The scenarios were applied to two data-sets and compared on the basis of performance indicators, which include operating costs, utilisation rates of nurses and number of overtime hours done. The important findings were that there is no relationship between the number of nurses required and the number of operating rooms used; the simultaneous scheduling of nurses and surgical interventions provided a better resource usage, a higher occupation rate of nurses, less overtime and furthermore, operating costs were lowered by at least 10% on average.

Healthcare scheduling in optimization context: a review

“…The uncertainty in scheduling techniques are the most difficult task, and they are more concrete, since, the uncertainty in time frame is the most interesting topic. Operating room scheduling integrated with other healthcare services such as patient [ 13 ] scheduling, nurse [ 120 ] is limited. However, the integration between an operating room with other systems in the hospital will enhance the hospital performance and will lead to improving the hospitalization services (Table 14 ) summaries recent methods, versions and categories.…”

Identifying nurse managers' essential information needs in daily unit operation in perioperative settings

“…Traditionally, anaesthesiologists, different surgical specialists and nursing staff work together in the operating departments and day surgery units (Di Martinelly et al, ). In our study, we only focused on nurse managers' information needs, not on those of the surgeons or anaesthesiologists.…”

“…Traditionally, the tactical planning of services starts by allocating operating room time for different medical specialties. The necessary resources of nursing care are planned after the allocation of time slots for the medical specialties (Di Martinelly, Baptiste, & Maknoon, ). The operative planning of the unit is usually performed about 2 days before a planned operation (e.g.…”

Application of Operational Research Techniques in Operating Room Scheduling Problems: Literature Overview

“…The special situations of the nurse units and their relations with the operating room are reflected. Martinelly et al [ 34 ] developed a model proposal that shows the relationship between the operating room and nurse management, and the number of operating rooms, number of nurses, and overtime concepts. When the main purpose of the study is examined, an integration that represents two different management areas is seen with a flexible model understanding.…”