Workforce staffing and scheduling: Hospital nursing specific models

Decisions relating to hospital nurse staffing and scheduling are among the most important decisions made in hospitals today. Staffing and scheduling choices must be made which will result in timely and high-quality care to patients. These choices are complicated by the requirement for round-the-clock staffing in many hospital nursing units, a severe nursing shortage, and an outcry from many quarters to cut costs of health care. In general, patients today are kept in hospitals only if they are in need of highly skilled nursing care. In this paper, the authors present a review of some of the issues in health care currently influencing the hospital nurse staffing and scheduling environment. In addition, they review the literature and illustrates nurse manager’s concerns, and approaches taken in the past by operations researchers to address those concerns. The authors present some data from a recent study of nurse managers in 31 hospitals that illustrates the complexity of the issues. They conclude with a discussion of future research directions in hospital nurse staffing and scheduling.