An Integer Programming Model for a Nurse Scheduling Problem

Abstract

This paper addresses a nurse scheduling problem that is present in a hospital. In order to accommodate the rising cost of sustaining and maintaining the hospital, there is a demand to analyse the manpower scheduling problem by not compromising the needs of the patients. Therefore, this study aims to apply a mathematical method to find the optimal number of nurses to be assigned for duties each day and shift in a hospital. An integer linear programming model is developed to represent the nurse scheduling problem. The mathematical model is solved by using the QM for windows software and the results provides an optimal solution to the nurse scheduling problem.