A Flexible Mixed Integer Programming framework for Nurse Scheduling

In this paper, a nurse-scheduling model is developed using mixed integer programming model. It is deployed to a general care ward to replace and automate the current manual approach for scheduling. The developed model differs from other similar studies in that it optimizes both hospital’s requirement as well as nurse preferences by allowing flexibility in the transfer of nurses from different duties. The model also incorporated additional policies which are part of the hospital’s requirement but not part of the legislations. Hospital’s key primary mission is to ensure continuous ward care service with appropriate number of nursing staffs and the right mix of nursing skills. The planning and scheduling is done to avoid additional non essential cost for hospital. Nurses’ preferences are taken into considerations such as the number of night shift and consecutive rest days. We will also reformulate problems from another paper which considers the penalty objective using the model but without the flexible components. The models are built using AIMMS which solves the problem in very short amount of time.