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A New Approach in Solving Nurse Rostering Problems
The safety and quality
of care provided in the nation's health care facilities is directly
related to the number and mix of direct care nursing staff. More than a
decade of research shows that nurse staffing levels and skill mix make a
difference in the outcomes of patients. Studies show that when there are
more nurses, there are lower mortality rates, shorter lengths of stay,
better care plans, lower costs, and fewer complications.
But u nfortunately, there
is a growing nurse shortage all over the world. For example, in
September 2000, the Ministry of Health in Singapore said the nation was
short at least 650 nurses, and needed to hire an additional 3,000 by
2004 to work at the nursing homes and community hospitals that are
expected to open over the next few years.
Hospitals, long-term
care facilities and other health care providers across the world are
reporting problems filling nursing positions. The extent of the concern
about this emerging shortage underscores the fact that having a
sufficient number of qualified nurses is critical to the health of our
nation.
In addition to the
important relationship between nurse staffing and patient care, several
studies have shown that one of the primary factors for the increasing
nurse turnover rate is dissatisfaction with workload/staffing. Nurses
are, understandably, reluctant to accept positions in which they will
face inappropriate staffing, inefficient rostering, be confronted by
mandatory overtime, inappropriately rushed through patient care
activities, and unable to provide the high quality care that they were
trained to give.
Optimized and efficient
nurse scheduling allow nurses the time that they need to make patient
assessments, complete nursing tasks, respond to health care emergencies,
and provide the level of care that patients deserve. It also increases
nurse satisfaction and reduces turnover. As nursing salaries make up the
largest portion of hospital costs, the effective and optimal scheduling
of nursing personnel will help to control healthcare costs.
FriarTuck aims to
develop a new approach to solving nurse rostering problems along
promising avenues that have not yet been studied. The new methodology
will be able to efficiently cope with the complexity of the problem and
to successfully capture the variety of the constraints imposed on
rosters and personnel preferences regarding the roster, that are
otherwise difficult to model. The developed approach will efficiently
solve problems in modern healthcare institutions.
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