A case study on the application of 0-1 goal programming : nurse scheduling

Abstract

The continuous pattern of working 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, needs a working shift environment that could affect the working conditions of the nurses. This involves social life and nurses’ level of health. Therefore the development of a nurse scheduling model that can be accepted well by all parties is necessary to enable it to be applied in the nurse scheduling system. This nurse scheduling considers policy imposed by the hospital and demand from the nurses so that there is more balance, quality and fairness in the production of the nurse scheduling model. Hence, in this research, 0-1 goal programming approach is applied in the development of nurse scheduling model because of its ability to produce a model with multiple objectives. Approach to the problem was illustrated on the Maternity Ward 2, Hospital Tawau, Sabah involving U29 and U19 nurses. The result obtained by LINGO software version 10.0 shows that the developed model of nurse scheduling using 0-1 goal programming approach performs better than the manual method. This is because it was successful in meeting the hospital policy and nurses’ preferences.