More humane optimization of the schedules of health care institutions – OptiHSoins
More humane optimization of the schedules of health care institutions
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Challenges and objectives
France has nearly 1,400 healthcare facilities with 700,000 healthcare workers, particularly nurses and nursing assistants. Work within each department is organized according to schedules, the construction of which is often complex, given the challenges it raises: ensuring the continuity and safety of care 24/7, complying with legislation and the allocated budget, but also preserving the quality of care, the efficiency of services, and teams. Today, the quality of life at work for employees is strongly emphasized as an important factor in reducing stress, turnover, or absenteeism rates, but also and above all because it would have an impact on the safety and quality of care. Considering this hypothesis, management and managerial tools prove to be at the heart of a reflection on the improvement (or deterioration) of these work environments. From this perspective, the management of schedules by healthcare executives is a crucial dimension that deserves attention. The OptiHSoins project aims to develop an innovative decision-making tool for managing healthcare team schedules in hospitals. The goal is to improve caregiver satisfaction, the efficiency of hospital services, and the quality of care, while taking into account regulatory, budgetary, and human resource constraints. The tool will be co-designed with users to promote its adoption and effectiveness.
The OptiHSoins project aims to develop tools that facilitate the management of healthcare team schedules by healthcare managers, taking into account real operational constraints while also considering the human aspect in the organization of work. In order to integrate these two essential dimensions, the study brings together researchers from the field of Human and Social Sciences (HSS) to better understand the human issues and levers of action at work from design to implementation, and researchers from the Operational Research (OR) community to build balanced and realistic schedule proposals. Ultimately, the results and deliverables will be the development of an innovative decision-making tool for schedule management that allows: 1) To respect regulatory and budgetary constraints. 2) To take into account the well-being of caregivers and patients. 3) To optimize time management in hospital departments. 4) And ultimately to improve the quality of care.
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Numerous studies in hospitals show the great difficulty of creating work schedules, which is a source of tension in the teams and a very heavy burden for the managers. These studies also highlight the lack of software and methodological tools to simplify this task. In this context, the research project OptiHSoins proposes first of all, on the basis of a qualitative research methodology belonging to a sociology of activity, to analyse the work of health managers and care teams linked to the elaboration and co-construction of schedules. The development of a decision-making tool that takes into account the collective strategies and practices identified constitutes the second stage. The objective is to provide means to support inter-personal arrangements through simplified evaluations and comparisons between relevant alternative solutions. To this end, the observations and analysis of the activity will feed the development of innovative optimisation methods, taking into account the great variety and number of collective constraints and habits, in order to allow a significant saving of time for the construction and management of the schedules of the nursing staff. Particular attention will be paid to solutions that allow for exchanges between staff, and that can be explained in order to support discussions and operational decisions.
Project coordination
Odile BELLENGUEZ (Laboratoire des Sciences du Numérique de Nantes)
The author of this summary is the project coordinator, who is responsible for the content of this summary. The ANR declines any responsibility as for its contents.
Partnership
LS2N Laboratoire des Sciences du Numérique de Nantes
LIFAT Laboratoire d'Informatique Fondamentale et Appliquée de Tours
GRANEM GROUPE DE RECHERCHE ANGEVIN EN ECONOMIE ET MANAGEMENT
LARIS LABORATOIRE ANGEVIN DE RECHERCHE EN INGENIERIE DES SYSTEMES
SSG Sciences Sociales et de Gestion
Help of the ANR 431,541 euros
Beginning and duration of the scientific project:
December 2023
- 48 Months
