optimization the number of nurses in the emergency department using linear programming technique

introduction: aim of current study is determination of optimal number of nurses in the emergency department of shiraz ali asghar hospital. method: current study is an applied study and belongs to operational research (or) studies. the population has been studied in this research, includes records of referred patients to the emergency department of hospital in 2008. sampling was performed in the forms of stratified (monthly) and simple for all of the records and each of months respectively. required data collection was performed from statistics notebook and also patient’s records using data collection forms. after average determination of entering patients in a day at eight period in three hours, determining the type of provided services and also the period of offering nursing services ( with using time information)determine optimum number of required nurses in different periods of hospital with using of linear programming technique by lingo 8 software. results: the minimum number of nurses needed in emergency department of ali asghar hospital regarding to desired services to the patients were obtained 1 and 3 nurses for each shift and a day respectively. conclusion: according to the results the used number of nurses in the emergency department was more than optimum number. it seems that, obtained number of nurses from quantitative methods such as linear programming technique is much less than the calculated number experimentally by the directors of nursing.