Resident scheduling in teaching hospitals with the use of quantitative methods

• Applicants: Professor Dr. Manfred Blobner; Professor Dr. Jens O. Brunner
• Subject Area: Accounting and Finance ; Anaesthesiology ; Public Health, Healthcare Research, Social and Occupational Medicine
• Term: from 2018 to 2024
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 405488489

In Germany there are currently almost 60,000 residents in one of 57 specialist training programs. The high cost pressures of hospitals and the changing view of the medical profession regarding the work-life balance have led to recruitment problems and low employee satisfaction in many places. A promising approach to counter this problem is through an objective and structured training planning. This research project mainly deals with the strategic and tactical-operative training scheduling of residents. In addition to relieving the medical staff who are currently responsible for the planning process, this research project increases the predictability of a structured training. This gives hospitals the opportunity to increase the quality of their training and, consequently, their attractiveness to other hospitals. In addition, supervisors from different departments can better assess the knowledge of residents and thus to keep the level of service, which is particularly important in hospitals, permanently high even when changing residents. From the point of view of the residents, a well-structured training planning, in addition to ensuring the training horizon and goals, enables a high degree of information. Residents are therefore no longer surprised by a short-term change of department – the residents are currently informed one or two weeks in advance about a change – and have a direct insight into their training progress. In addition to the mathematical modeling of the problems and the development of exact and heuristic solution approaches, a practice-oriented review of the procedures by our cooperation partner takes place. Therefore, in the development of the procedures, attention must be paid to practicability. Further, interactions within and outside the training planning should be analyzed – especially with regard to fairness, continuity and uncertainty factors. This research project uses approaches from operations research/management science. In addition, a qualitative/quantitative empirical evaluation of the results realized is conducted.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants