A Platform for Dynamic Optimal Nurse Scheduling Based on Integer Linear Programming along with Multiple Criteria Constraints

Abstract

Nurse rostering is a critical issue in hospitals around the world. With multiple constraints that must be considered to ensure job satisfaction, nurse scheduling usually poses a heavy financial burden on human resources with limited available staff resources. Managers also need to reproduce the roster of duties for the nursing staff. In addition, the staff allocation should be based on the visit number of patients. Hence, to address this issue, we implemented an automatic mechanism of nurse scheduling based on integer linear programing, along with multiple criteria constraints, which are suitable for real-world practice, and users can configure conditions for tasks and nurses as constraints in the integer linear programing. Finally, the platform could assign 36 staff members to 23 stations based on the proposed dynamic optimal algorithm following 20 stringent constraints in 0.5 second. Moreover, the specific manipulation shifts of scheduling on the platform is easy and can be automatically computed in minimum time. Compared with the manual scheduling, the proposed automatic mechanism could perform the scheduling task quickly and fairly. Most importantly, the platform is adequately reliable to decrease the burden for scheduling.