Nurses scheduling under epidemic crises: balancing demand coverage and nurse fatigue

Abstract

During epidemic crisis (EC) situations, meeting urgent medical demands is crucial. However, medical staff, especially nurses, often experience more fatigue due to sharply increasing workloads and irregular shifts during EC. The sustained pandemics exacerbate the fatigue issue and further cause higher turnover and understaffing of nurses, which may jeopardize the whole healthcare system. It is essential to adopt a prudent scheduling method that can balance urgent demands and nurse fatigue during epidemic crises. This paper aims to provide a solution considering the balance of nurse fatigue and the satisfaction of demands for a nurse scheduling problem during epidemic crises. We used the bio-mathematical model of fatigue (BMMF) to predict the fatigue of nurses and constructed a mixed-integer nonlinear programming (MINLP) problem for scheduling the time slots for nurses. Then, we conducted a computational experiment simulating the nurse scheduling problems during EC situations to compare the performance of the model we built and the other classic scheduling methods. Our results indicate that, compared to the other modified classic scheduling methods under crisis emergencies, our approach taking account of the BMMF in nurse scheduling during EC leads to less nurse fatigue and better balances the fatigue and the urgent demands. Given the considerable fatigue experienced by nurses in EC emergencies, this scheduling method considering fatigue can balance demands and protect nurses with less fatigue, which is highly beneficial for nurses’ well-being in EC emergency situations. Our solution offers practical strategies for meeting significant demands and reducing nurse fatigue during epidemic crises and emergencies.

Keywords: nurse fatigue, epidemic crisis, nurse scheduling, emergency management

DOI: 10.54941/ahfe1006964