Optimal Nurse Scheduling using
Assignment Problem
INTRODUCTION
Nurse scheduling involves deciding which nurse should be assigned to which hospital shift in order to
ensure optimal staffing.
Hospitals operate with limited nursing staff, while patient care must be provided continuously
throughout the day.
Nurses are required to work in multiple shifts, such as morning, evening, night, and ICU shifts.
In many hospitals, manual scheduling methods are still used, which often lead to inefficiencies.
Manual scheduling results in overtime, skill mismatch, and nurse fatigue, affecting workforce efficiency.
Since patient care depends on efficient scheduling, proper nurse–shift allocation is essential.
Operations Research provides mathematical and optimization techniques to support optimal scheduling
decisions.
PROBLEM STATEMENT
Given
👩⚕️ Set of nurses
⏰ Set of hospital shifts
Constraints
✔️ One nurse → one shift
✔️ One shift → one nurse
💰 Each nurse–shift assignment has a cost
Overtime cost
Skill mismatch penalty
Objective
Minimize total assignment cost
Why Cost-Based OR Modeling
Assignment Assignment Cost=
Overtime Cost + Skill Mismatch Penalty
Problem? Why Assignment Problem is Appropriate
The nurse scheduling problem
Designed specifically for one-to-one
has a one-to-one assignment
matching
structure
Handles cost-based decisions efficiently
Each decision involves
Provides a guaranteed optimal solution
assigning one resource to one
using the Hungarian Algorithm
task
Multiple feasible assignments “Hence, nurse scheduling is best modeled
exist, but their costs differ
as an Assignment Problem in Operations
The goal is to select the
Research.”
assignment with the minimum
total cost
Mathematical Model of Assignment Problem
Decision Variable: Constraints:
Each nurse works exactly one shift
Objective Function:
Each shift is assigned exactly one nurse
Binary restriction
“Solution Method: Hungarian Algorithm”
Main Steps
Row reduction
Column reduction Hungarian
Cover all zeros with minimum
number of lines
Make optimal assignment using Method
independent zeros The Hungarian method is an Operations Research
optimization algorithm used to solve the assignment
Cost Matrix problem efficiently.
↓ It provides the optimal one-to-one assignment between
nurses and hospital shifts.
Row Reduction
The method works on a cost matrix, where each value
↓
represents:
Column Reduction Overtime cost
↓ Skill mismatch penalty
Zero Covering
↓ Outcome
Optimal Assignment Guarantees minimum total assignment cost
Ensures:
↓
No nurse is overloaded
Minimum Cost
No shift is left uncovered
Manual Example
Cost Matrix
Step-1: Row Reduction Step-2: Column Reduction
Subtract minimum value from each row: Subtract minimum value from each column:
Final Assignment and Result
Step-3: Optimal Assignment Step-4: Minimum Cost
Select zeros such that: Calculation
One zero per row
One zero per
column
N1 → S2
N2 → S3
N3 → S1
N4 → S4
Minimum Total Cost :
Result =2+3+5+4
Optimal nurse–shift schedule obtained =14
Overtime and skill mismatch minimized
Hospital staffing efficiency improved
Real-Life Meaning of “Cost” in Hospital
Scheduling
In real hospitals, the “cost” is not only money.
It represents the difficulty and risk of assigning a nurse to a shift.
As we know, we model cost as:
Assignment Cost = Overtime Cost + Skill Mismatch Penalty
Lower Cost = Better Nurse–Shift Match
Quick Comparision:
Manual/Random example: Total Cost = 18
Hungarian Optimal: Total Cost = 14 → Improvement = 4 (~22%)
Python
Interpretation:
Implementation:
ADVANTAGES :
1)Reduces Overtime
2)Better Nurse Utilization
3)Scalable model
4)Polynomial-time optimal solution
LIMITATIONS :
1)No nurse preferences considered
2)Static shifts
3)Equal shift importance
4)Requires balanced cost matrix
Conclusion
The assignment problem provides an efficient and mathematically optimal method for
nurse scheduling by ensuring minimum total cost and complete coverage of shifts under
given constraints.
Future Scope
1)Incorporating Preferences
2)Multi-day scheduling
3)Integration with real hospital data
THANK YOU