29 March 2021
The Nurse Scheduling Problem (NSP) is a well-known optimization situation. The objective is to find an optimal way to assign nurses to shifts, where each nurse has their preferences for which shifts they would like to work. In addition, we need to meet the operational needs of the hospital in terms of nurse numbers and attributes for each shift.
Of course, a model of the NSP can be applied to constrained scheduling problems in many other situations.
A paper published in December 2018 describes a new formulation and solution for the Nurse Scheduling Problem, along with a real case study of applying the model in an Egyptian hospital.
The authors claim that the model improves the level of nurses’ satisfaction by considering their preferences, as well as decreasing the overall overtime cost by 36%.
A PDF of the paper is available at: A new formulation and solution for the nurse scheduling problem: A case study in Egypt.
