Nurse scheduling method for nurses' working patterns mixed situation

2017 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 15K01197
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (C)
• Allocation Type: Multi-year Fund
• Section: 一般
• Research Field: Social systems engineering/Safety system
• Research Institution: Osaka Prefecture University
• Principal Investigator: Morizawa Kazuko 大阪府立大学, 工学(系)研究科(研究院), 教授 (60220050)
• Co-Investigator(Kenkyū-buntansha): 平林 直樹 大阪府立大学, 人間社会システム科学研究科, 准教授 (80199091)
• Project Period (FY): 2015-04-01 – 2018-03-31
• Keywords: ナース・スケジューリング / 医療・福祉 / 組合せ最適化

Outline of Final Research Achievements

In nurse scheduling, which makes rosters for nurses who work in shifts, it is required to meet various constraints to assure the quality of nursing and working condition of nurses. Recently, against a background of nurse shortage, hospitals which hire nurses by some types of working patterns according to their personal situations are increasing in Japan. This research deals with the nurse scheduling problems in such a hospital and proposes a heuristic method based on a series of heuristic rules for generating acceptable rosters efficiently. To evaluate the effectiveness of the proposed method, the nurse scheduling problem is formulated in an integer programming form and is solved by using an MIP solver. Numerical experiments on 70 examples in a Japanese hospital where both two-shift nurses and three-shift nurses are hired demonstrate that rosters obtained by the proposed method have acceptable quality and the computation time is short enough for practical use.

Free Research Field

経営工学