Nurse Scheduling with Joint Normalized Shift and Day-Off Preference Satisfaction Using a Genetic Algorithm with Immigrant Scheme

Abstract

To make a fair and satisfactory nurse shift schedule, this paper proposes a novel preference satisfaction function, in which numbers of the preferred work shifts and days-off of the nursing staff are balanced, and ranks for preferences and number of the preference ranks satisfied so far are also considered. Such a preference function is capable of equivalently and fairly planning the nurse preference schedule to improve the total satisfaction. Additionally, distributed sensors can be applied to collect the information on hospital beds to provide the schedule planner to determine the lowest required amount of manpower for each work shift, to avoid the working overload of the nursing staff. To solve the nursing schedule problem, we propose a genetic algorithm (GA) with an immigrant scheme, in which utilization of the immigrant scheme is helpful in efficiently reducing amount of infeasible solutions due to practical scheduling constraints, so that the GA can efficiently find better solutions for larger-scale problems. Performance of the proposed GA with and without solution recovery scheme is evaluated by conducting a comprehensive experimental analysis on three different-size instances.

Applying Heuristic Algorithms to Solve Inter-hospital Hierarchical Allocation and Scheduling Problems of Medical Staff

“…The solution procedures for the scheduling problem of medical staff (or manpower scheduling problem) can be divided into two categories, that is, mathematical programming [1,4,12,18,19,30,31] and meta-heuristic algorithms [21,23,[32][33][34][35][36][37][38]. Research on applying mathematical programming methods focuses on constructing the mathematical model to represent the characteristics of the scheduling problem of medical staff; research on applying meta-heuristic algorithms focuses on searching for an approximate optimal solution within a reasonable time.…”

“…Solving the nurse schedule problem, Lin [35] proposed a GA with an immigrant scheme where the immigrant scheme helps reduce the amount of infeasible solutions due to real-life scheduling constraints. Additionally, the authors had collected information on hospital beds through sensors to determine the manpower required for each work shift.…”

Satisfaction Index of Employees on Service Quality through Quality Leadership at Three Hospitals B-Type, Central Java Province

“…Job satisfaction can be viewed from two sides, namely in terms of employees and hospitals. The employees side, job satisfaction will bring up pleasant feeling at work, while the hospital side, job satisfaction will increase productivity, improve employee attitudes and behavior in providing excellent service (Vis-cardi et al, 2014;Al Maqbali, 2015;Yarbrough et al, 2017;Hariyati & Safril, 2018;Koning, 2014;Leineweber, et al, 2016;Legrain et al, 2015;Lin et al, 2015). Job satisfaction must be maintaining in order to improve hospital performance.…”

“…Leadership of room head has an important role in implementing the quality managementsystem in the room because the room head has the responsibility in managing, planning, and controlling the performance of his staff in quality management. To overcome the problems in quality management, it can be overcome by the quality leadership of hospital directors orienting to the quality of service (Armstrong-Stassen, et al, 2015;Lin et al, 2015;Koning, 2014).…”

The Impact of Nurse Scheduling Management on Nurses’ Job Satisfaction in Army Hospital: A Cross-Sectional Research

“…The management of scheduling is a process of planning, organizing, staffing, actuating, and controlling of nurse working hours (Armstrong-Stassen, Freeman, Cameron, & Rajacich, 2015;C. Lin, Kang, Chiang, & Chen, 2015;Marquis & Huston, 2012).…”