Duty and workstation rostering considering preferences and fairness: a case study at a department of anaesthesiology

This research addresses a personnel scheduling problem at hospitals. We present two mixed integer linear programming models - a duty-roster model and a workstation-roster model. The duty-roster model determines the assignment of physicians to 24-h and late duties whereas the workstation-roster model assigns physicians to actual workstations as operating rooms. The former serves as an input for the latter. In both models, we maximise the number of assignments subject to labour regulations and internal department-specific scheduling rules. Furthermore, we consider experience levels and qualifications in our models. To promote for job satisfaction, we take into account fairness aspects as well as individual physician preferences. Using real-world data from our cooperating department of anaesthesiology with 120 physicians, we set up a case study. Computational results indicate the superior quality compared to manual scheduling which is currently in use at our cooperation hospital. Furthermore, we develop an extensive computational study with 5800 instances to test the models. We show that the computational burden is negligible and we derive managerial insight for the scheduling process.     «

This research addresses a personnel scheduling problem at hospitals. We present two mixed integer linear programming models - a duty-roster model and a workstation-roster model. The duty-roster model determines the assignment of physicians to 24-h and late duties whereas the workstation-roster model assigns physicians to actual workstations as operating rooms. The former serves as an input for the latter. In both models, we maximise the number of assignments subject to labour regulations and int...     »