Abstract
At a hospital in Denmark around 40 midwives support the pregnancy of approx.
6000 pregnant women every year. Their role is to monitor the pregnancies and
prepare the women for labour. Based on the due date of a woman, authority
guidelines prescribe specific and mostly rather narrow time windows within
which the pregnant woman should have consultations with a midwife. Therefore,
once a pregnant woman enters the system, here sequence of consultations
for the time period until labour is fairly fixed. There is a clear goal that, as
far as possible, each pregnant woman should see the same midwife at every
consultation. Every week the newly arrived pregnant women are assigned an
arbitrary free time slot belonging to a specific midwife. In turn this midwife is
expected to have consultations with this woman in specific weeks according to
the authority guidelines. This random assignment of pregnant woman to specific
midwives, without any concern to the midwives? future schedules, means
that each midwife has a very unbalanced workload over the year. Furthermore,
it means that there is an imbalance between the workloads of the different midwifes.
The aim of this project is therefore to devise a method that can make
a fair distribution of pregnant women among the midwives. The distribution
should result in a balanced work load for each midwife and a balanced work
load among the midwives while at the same time making sure that the time
windows for consultations are not violated.
6000 pregnant women every year. Their role is to monitor the pregnancies and
prepare the women for labour. Based on the due date of a woman, authority
guidelines prescribe specific and mostly rather narrow time windows within
which the pregnant woman should have consultations with a midwife. Therefore,
once a pregnant woman enters the system, here sequence of consultations
for the time period until labour is fairly fixed. There is a clear goal that, as
far as possible, each pregnant woman should see the same midwife at every
consultation. Every week the newly arrived pregnant women are assigned an
arbitrary free time slot belonging to a specific midwife. In turn this midwife is
expected to have consultations with this woman in specific weeks according to
the authority guidelines. This random assignment of pregnant woman to specific
midwives, without any concern to the midwives? future schedules, means
that each midwife has a very unbalanced workload over the year. Furthermore,
it means that there is an imbalance between the workloads of the different midwifes.
The aim of this project is therefore to devise a method that can make
a fair distribution of pregnant women among the midwives. The distribution
should result in a balanced work load for each midwife and a balanced work
load among the midwives while at the same time making sure that the time
windows for consultations are not violated.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Publication date | 2016 |
| Publication status | Published - 2016 |
| Event | 28th European Conference on Operational Research - Poznan, Poland Duration: 3 Jul 2016 → 7 Jul 2016 Conference number: 28 https://euro2016.euro-online.org/ |
Conference
| Conference | 28th European Conference on Operational Research |
|---|---|
| Number | 28 |
| Country/Territory | Poland |
| City | Poznan |
| Period | 03/07/2016 → 07/07/2016 |
| Internet address |