Nurse Scheduling Problem Considering Load Balancing

Abstract

Planning the shift schedule of nurses is a time-consuming task. Senior staff members, (e.g., head nurses) spend considerable time and effort performing the activity; this scheduling problem is referred to as the nurse scheduling problem (NSP). Automating this scheduling process would be considerably beneficial. NSP is a complicated combinatorial optimization problem wherein multiple constraints of various levels are entangled vertically and horizontally. Various researchers have employed different optimization methods to solve NSP. Among these, heuristics methods, (e.g., genetic algorithms) have exhibited promising results; however, they have not satisfied all of the problem constraints. Several commercial products have also been offered to solve NSP, but they tend to be considerably expensive. A few such products are also not stable with regard to search performance. Herein, we develop an NSP system that can derive stable solutions utilizing a genetic algorithm. The NSP system proposed also satisfies the requirements of each shift and shift pattern constraint while considering the shift dulation-shift type balance for each nurse.