Nurse Scheduling in Evaluation of Team Formation

Abstract

Nurse scheduling refers to the process of creating work schedules for nurses. In many cases, this task is managed by ward administrators, including head nurses, who must balance the personal preferences of nurses (such as desired days off and personal commitments) with the operational needs of the ward. To optimize this process, numerous studies have explored methods to improve both nurse satisfaction and hospital efficiency, leading to the development of various mathematical models and numerical approaches. In this paper, we focus on another crucial aspect of evaluating a nurse schedule: team formation. Research on evaluating team effectiveness in Japanese hospitals remains limited, despite its importance. Some studies based on cases from other countries have proposed forming effective teams by incorporating peer evaluations of compatibility among nurses. However, directly applying such methods to cases in Japan presents challenges due to cultural and ethical concerns. For instance, conducting compatibility surveys across an entire ward could potentially disrupt workplace dynamics and morale. To address these issues, this paper proposes a team evaluation model that integrates managerial perspectives while mitigating these concerns. We assess its validity, robustness, and practical applicability within hospital settings. Validity was confirmed by verifying that the trends observed in the pair evaluation values were accurately reflected in the team evaluation values. Robustness was demonstrated by showing that even if some pair evaluations were missing, the impact on the evaluation values was limited, thereby ensuring the stability of the team evaluation values. Practical applicability was confirmed by verifying that the evaluation model could be applied to actual work schedule data created in the field. Furthermore, the proposed team