Flexible nursing staff planning when patient demands are uncertain.

Determination of appropriate nursing staff levels to provide quality service and maintain economic efficiency is a difficult problem for health care administrators to solve. The objective of this paper then is to prevent a mathematical model for determining the number of staff among full time and part time staff as well as overtime when patient demands are uncertain. The demand level is considered as a distribution on a daily basis. The model intends to integrate an entire week as a whole so that the number of staff is found on a weekly basis. Based on this model, the nursing workforce can accommodate patient needs efficiently and economically while remaining flexible in an uncertain demand environment.