Nursing service planning for the satisfaction of patients: models and algorithms

Official URL: https://dx.doi.org/10.1504/IJSOM.2021.116105

In this study, we aim to plan nursing services in order to reduce number of personnel and increase patient satisfaction in hospitals. Lack of enough expert staff is one of the main reasons for long-term waiting period of patients in hospitals. This research is a descriptive-analytical, applicable type that is conducted to determine the minimum required nurses according to patients referring at different times, determine program shift with the minimum required work hours and planning shifts of nurses with the lowest cost for emergency department. Its population includes the referred patients to emergency department and nurses of a medical centre. Time series method is used to predict number of the referred patients to emergency using MINITAB 2016 software. This paper provided a bi-objective mathematical model to minimise the number of nurses and wait time with a focus on patients’ satisfaction. NSGA-II and Bees meta-heuristic algorithms are used as solution approach to solve the model. Results obtained from each algorithm is compared with each other under several indexes.