Ikegami A, Niwa A
Seikei University, Tokyo.
J Hum Ergol (Tokyo). 2001 Dec;30(1-2):71-6.
Scheduling nurses to staff shifts is a major problem in hospitals. The necessity of maintaining a certain level of service and skill in the makeup of every shift, while balancing the workload among the nurses involved, is incredibly difficult. It is often impossible to develop a schedule which satisfies all the requirements despite the time and resources spent in the effort. This paper summarizes all our published research on nurse scheduling to date. The difficulties realized by our two investigations in Japan are shown first, together with a resulting scheduling problem. The nurse scheduling model based on the results is then described. In this model, all constraints are divided into two essentially different types; that which maintains a certain level of skill for each shift ('shift constraints') and that which concerns the workload for each nurse ('nurse constraints'). By classifying the constraints in this manner, we can determine what is affected by a specific constraint when the constraint is not satisfied. We developed efficient algorithms while taking advantage of the structure of this model. Finally, it is shown that our algorithm can solve this problem for a 2-shift system efficiently.
安排护士排班是医院面临的一个主要问题。在每个班次的人员构成中保持一定的服务水平和技能水平，同时平衡相关护士的工作量，这非常困难。尽管投入了时间和资源，但通常不可能制定出满足所有要求的排班表。本文总结了我们迄今为止发表的关于护士排班的所有研究。首先展示了我们在日本进行的两项调查所意识到的困难，以及由此产生的排班问题。然后描述了基于这些结果的护士排班模型。在这个模型中，所有约束被分为两种本质上不同的类型：一种是为每个班次维持一定技能水平的约束（“班次约束”），另一种是与每个护士的工作量相关的约束（“护士约束”）。通过以这种方式对约束进行分类，当某个约束不满足时，我们可以确定具体是哪些方面受到了影响。我们利用这个模型的结构开发了高效算法。最后表明，我们的算法能够有效地解决两班制系统的这个问题。
