“Nursevendor Problem”: Personnel Staffing in the Presence of Endogenous Absenteeism
- 1 October 2013
- journal article
- Published by Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS) in Management Science
- Vol. 59 (10), 2237-2256
- https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2013.1713
Abstract
The problem of determining nurse staffing levels in a hospital environment is a complex task because of variable patient census levels and uncertain service capacity caused by nurse absenteeism. In this paper, we combine an empirical investigation of the factors affecting nurse absenteeism rates with an analytical treatment of nurse staffing decisions using a novel variant of the newsvendor model. Using data from the emergency department of a large urban hospital, we find that absenteeism rates are consistent with nurses exhibiting an aversion to higher levels of anticipated workload. Using our empirical findings, we analyze a single-period nurse staffing problem considering both the case of constant absenteeism rate (exogenous absenteeism) as well as an absenteeism rate that is a function of the number of nurses scheduled (endogenous absenteeism). We provide characterizations of the optimal staffing levels in both situations and show that the failure to incorporate absenteeism as an endogenous effect results in understaffing. This paper was accepted by Yossi Aviv, operations management.Keywords
This publication has 40 references indexed in Scilit:
- Making a significant difference with burnout interventions: Researcher and practitioner collaborationJournal of Organizational Behavior, 2011
- Supplier diversification under binomial yieldOperations Research Letters, 2008
- Nurse absenteeism and workload: negative effect on restraint use, incident reports and mortalityJournal of Advanced Nursing, 2007
- What degree of work overload is likely to cause increased sickness absenteeism among nurses? Evidence from the RAFAELA patient classification systemJournal of Advanced Nursing, 2007
- Reexamining the Nurse Scheduling Problem: Staffing Ratios and Nursing Shortages*Decision Sciences, 2006
- Schedule Recovery: Unplanned Absences in Service Operations*Decision Sciences, 2005
- The Effects of Nurse Staffing on Adverse Events, Morbidity, Mortality, and Medical CostsNursing Research, 2003
- There Is No Aggregation Bias: Why Macro Logit Models WorkJournal of Business & Economic Statistics, 1991
- Major influences on employee attendance: A process model.Journal of Applied Psychology, 1978
- Changes in Accidents and other Absences with Length of ServiceHuman Relations, 1955