Multiple-period Optimal Nurse Scheduling under Learning Effect

The learning effect is the phenomenon that the job processing time declines when the number of jobs finished increases for workers in the manufacturing system. Although learning and gaining experience is important in the nursing practice in hospitals, this effect has not been included in the current researches on nurse scheduling problems. In this work, we summarize the properties of the learning effect in the nursing practice and formulate a dynamic programming model to illustrate the scheduling problem considering this effect. A priority rule is raised and proved to guide the training of nurses and two decision policies are put forward. In numerical experiments, the comparison between the two decision policies are given based on different starting states of the system; the illustration of the priority rule is also presented.