Nurse scheduling

This is a simple proof-of-concept project to help mental health nurses schedule their day. The app will take the staffer lists, and the different tasks for the day, and create a schedule automatically that tries to balance all the preferences for breaks, minimal RMNs on observations, etc.

Example

Imagine we have a schedule setup like the following example done by-hand by an RMN:

The current scheduler app would output the following schedule automatically:

Time    Medication               General observations     Patient A (2:1)          Patient B (2:1)          Patient C (1:1)           Breaks                   Unassigned
7:30:                            Jack                     Maxine, Jenny            Bob, Douglas             Marie                                             Lily, Sally, Nicola
8:00:                            Jack                     Maxine, Douglas          Bob, Nicola              Sally                                             Lily, Jenny, Marie
8:30:   Jenny                    Jack                     Marie, Maxine            Nicola, Douglas          Sally                                             Lily, Bob
9:00:                            Jack                     Marie, Sally             Nicola, Douglas          Bob                                               Lily, Jenny, Maxine
9:30:                            Jack                     Marie, Sally             Douglas, Bob             Maxine                                            Lily, Jenny, Nicola
10:00:                           Jack                     Marie, Maxine            Nicola, Bob              Sally                                             Lily, Jenny
10:30:                           Jack                     Sally, Marie             Nicola, Bob              Maxine                                            Jenny
11:00:                           Jack                     Sally, Marie             Bob, Nicola              Maxine                                            Jenny
11:30:                           Jack                     Sally, Marie             Nicola, Bob              Maxine                                            Jenny
12:00:                           Jack                     Sally, Marie             Nicola, Bob              Maxine                                            Jenny
12:30:  Jenny                    Jack                     Marie, Sally             Bob, Nicola              Maxine
13:00:                           Jack                     Marie, Maxine            Bob, Nicola              Sally                                             Jenny
13:30:                           Jack                     Sally, Douglas           Bob, Nicola              Marie                    Maxine                   Lily, Jenny
14:00:                           Jack                     Sally, Marie             Nicola, Bob              Douglas                  Maxine                   Lily, Jenny
14:30:                           Sally                    Jenny, Maxine            Douglas, Michael         Ryan                     Bob                      Mary, Eve
15:00:                           Sally                    Maxine, Eve              Douglas, Michael         Ryan                     Bob                      Jenny, Mary
15:30:                           Sally                    Bob, Mary                Ryan, Michael            Maxine                   Douglas                  Jenny, Eve
16:00:                           Sally                    Mary, Ryan               Bob, Michael             Maxine                   Douglas                  Jenny, Eve
16:30:                           Sally                    Maxine, Jenny            Bob, Michael             Douglas                  Ryan                     Mary, Eve
17:00:                           Sally                    Douglas, Maxine          Bob, Michael             Eve                      Ryan                     Jenny, Mary
17:30:  Mary                     Sally                    Maxine, Jenny            Ryan, Douglas            Bob                      Michael                  Eve
18:00:                           Sally                    Maxine, Mary             Ryan, Bob                Douglas                  Michael                  Jenny, Eve
18:30:                           Sally                    Douglas, Maxine          Michael, Ryan            Bob                      Eve                      Jenny, Mary
19:00:                           Sally                    Bob, Michael             Ryan, Douglas            Maxine                                            Jenny, Mary, Eve
19:30:                           Sally                    Douglas, Ryan            Bob, Michael             Maxine                                            Jenny, Mary, Eve
20:00:                           Sally                    Michael, Bob             Douglas, Ryan            Maxine                                            Jenny, Mary, Eve

Given

Time is divided into blocks of 30 minutes.

List of staff, each with different available blocks of time

Each employee has a designation as RMN (Registered Mental health Nurse) or HCA (Health Care Assistant).

Each employee has a designation as Male or Female (necessary for some male-only patients)

List of 1:1 patients that must have 1 staffer assigned at all times; optional male staffers only flag for each patient.

List of 2:1 patients that must have 2 staffers assigned at all times; optional male staffers only flag for each patient.

List of medication times that must each have 1 RMN assigned.

Constraints

Some constraints are absolutely required (hard) and others are merely preferences (soft). For each soft constraint, we place a certain weight on satisfying them. All weights can be adjusted.

Hard: one RMN assigned to each medication block

Hard: one person assigned to general observations at all times.

Hard: 1:1 and 2:1 patients with Male-only flags must have Male staffers assigned.

Hard: Each staffer can take one break and breaks occur only in a pre-defined [min,max] window of blocks (to prevent people being assigned a break too early or late in the day)

Soft: Any employee working two shifts must receive a 1-hour break before the last 2 blocks of their second shift.
    - RMN breaks: weight=0.1 (not very important)
    - HCA breaks: weight=20 (very important)

Soft: no member of staff assigned to more than 4 consecutive 1/2:1 blocks. weight=1 (moderately important)

Soft: HCAs should be preferred for observation assignments over RMNs. weight=0.5 (moderately important)

Approach

We use a combination of constraint satisfaction and heuristic greedy search. Given all the staffers and tasks, we solve for each time block individually, in chronological order. For a given block, we find all possible solutions that satisfy our hard constraints. Each solution is given a score based on the soft constraint weights. We keep the top K scoring viable solutions and use them to seed the next block; this proceeds recursively until we have solved every block. The result is a list of the K best solutions found.

TODO

• Use an excel spreadsheet as input
• Build javascript front-end and make it a web app

Contact

If you actually would like to use this for your nursing schedules, contact me: [email protected] -- I'd love for it to be useful to someone!