Multi-objective Nurse Scheduling Models with Patient Workload and Nurse Preferences

The purpose of this paper is to develop a nurse scheduling model that simultaneously addresses a set of multiple and oftentimes conflicting objectives in determining an optimal nurse schedule. The objectives we consider are minimizing nurse labor costs, minimizing patient dissatisfaction, minimizing nurse idle time, and maximizing job satisfaction. We formulate a series of multi-objective binary integer programming models for the nurse scheduling problem where both nurse shift preferences as a proxy for job satisfaction and patient workload as a proxy for patient dissatisfaction are considered in our models. A two-stage non-weighted goal programming solution method is provided to find an efficient solution that addresses the multiple objectives. Numerical results show that considering patient workload in the optimization models can make positive impacts in nurse scheduling by (1) improving nurse utilization while keeping higher nurse job satisfaction and (2) minimizing unsatisfied patient workloads.