A heuristic algorithm for nurse scheduling with balanced preference satisfaction

This paper tackles the nurse scheduling problem with balanced preference satisfaction which consists of generating an assignment of shifts to nurses over a given time horizon and ensuring that the satisfaction of nurses' personal preferences for shifts is as even as possible in order to ensure fairness. We propose a heuristic algorithm based on successive resolutions of the bottleneck assignment problem. The algorithm has two phases. In the first phase, the algorithm constructs an initial solution by solving successive bottleneck assignment problems. In the second phase, two improvement procedures based on reassignment steps are applied. Computational tests are carried out using instances from the standard benchmark dataset NSPLib. Our experiments indicate that the proposed method is effective and efficient, reducing discrepancies (hence improving fairness) between the individual rosters.

[1]  J P Howell,et al.  Cyclical scheduling of nursing personnel. , 1966, Hospitals.

[2]  Paolo Toth,et al.  Algorithm for the solution of the Bottleneck Assignment Problem , 2005, Computing.

[3]  Sanja Petrovic,et al.  Comparison of Algorithms for Nurse Rostering Problems , 2008 .

[4]  Nottingham Ng,et al.  A Hybrid Heuristic Ordering and Variable Neighbourhood Search for the Nurse Rostering Problem , 2005 .

[5]  H L Smith,et al.  Japanese Management Implications for Nursing Administration , 1984, The Journal of nursing administration.

[6]  M. Ohki,et al.  Nurse Scheduling by Using Cooperative GA with Efficient Mutation and Mountain-Climbing Operators , 2006, 2006 3rd International IEEE Conference Intelligent Systems.

[7]  D. Michael Warner,et al.  Scheduling Nursing Personnel According to Nursing Preference: A Mathematical Programming Approach , 1976, Oper. Res..

[8]  M. Ohki,et al.  Parallel processing of cooperative genetic algorithm for nurse scheduling , 2008, 2008 4th International IEEE Conference Intelligent Systems.

[9]  Hiroshi Imai,et al.  Classification of Various Neighborhood Operations for the Nurse Scheduling Problem , 2000, ISAAC.

[10]  Hendrik Van Landeghem,et al.  The State of the Art of Nurse Rostering , 2004, J. Sched..

[11]  Ebru Yilmaz,et al.  A Mathematical Programming Model for Scheduling of Nurses’ Labor Shifts , 2012, Journal of Medical Systems.

[12]  M L Miller,et al.  Implementing self-scheduling. , 1984, The Journal of nursing administration.

[13]  Wan Rosmanira Ismail,et al.  A Tabu Search approach to the nurse scheduling problem , 2008, 2008 International Symposium on Information Technology.

[14]  Ender Özcan,et al.  Memetic Algorithms for Nurse Rostering , 2005, ISCIS.

[15]  Chang-Chun Tsai,et al.  A two-stage modeling with genetic algorithms for the nurse scheduling problem , 2009, Expert Syst. Appl..

[16]  Mario Vanhoucke,et al.  An electromagnetic meta-heuristic for the nurse scheduling problem , 2007, J. Heuristics.

[17]  Michel Gendreau,et al.  A guide to vehicle routing heuristics , 2002, J. Oper. Res. Soc..

[18]  Sanja Petrovic,et al.  A hybrid metaheuristic case-based reasoning system for nurse rostering , 2009, J. Sched..

[19]  Melissa D. Goodman,et al.  A grasp-knapsack hybrid for a nurse-scheduling problem , 2009, J. Heuristics.

[20]  Jun Ota,et al.  Simulated Annealing Algorithm for Daily Nursing Care Scheduling Problem , 2007, 2007 IEEE International Conference on Automation Science and Engineering.

[21]  Hasan Selim,et al.  Nurse scheduling using fuzzy modeling approach , 2010, Fuzzy Sets Syst..

[22]  Jonathan F. Bard,et al.  Preference scheduling for nurses using column generation , 2005, Eur. J. Oper. Res..

[23]  Mario Vanhoucke,et al.  Comparison and hybridization of crossover operators for the nurse scheduling problem , 2008, Ann. Oper. Res..

[24]  Howell Jp,et al.  Cyclical scheduling of nursing personnel. , 1966 .

[25]  Andrew Lim,et al.  Nurse rostering problems - a bibliographic survey , 2003, Eur. J. Oper. Res..

[26]  Mario Vanhoucke,et al.  New Computational Results for the Nurse Scheduling Problem: A Scatter Search Algorithm , 2006, EvoCOP.