Title: Dynamic scheduling-based inpatient nursing support: applicability evaluation by laboratory experiments

Authors: Mingang Cheng; Masako Kanai-Pak; Noriaki Kuwahara; Hiromi Itoh Ozaku; Kiyoshi Kogure; Jun Ota

Addresses: Department of Precision Engineering, The University of Tokyo, 7-3-1 Hongo, Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo 113-8656, Japan ' Department of Nursing, Tokyo Ariake University of Medical and Health Sciences, 2-9-1 Ariake, Koto-ku, Tokyo 135-0065, Japan ' Department of Advanced Fibro-Science, Kyoto Institute of Technology, 1 Hashigami-Cho, Matsugasaki, Sakyo-Ku, Kyoto 606-8585, Japan ' Information Management Office, National Institute of Information and Communications Technology (NICT), 4-2-1 Nukui-Kitamachi, Koganei, Tokyo 184-8795, Japan ' Department of Robotics, Kanazawa Institute of Technology 3-1 Yatsukaho, Hakusan, Ishikawa 924-0838, Japan ' Research into Artifacts, Center for Engineering (RACE), The University of Tokyo, Kashiwanoha 5-1-5, Kashiwa, Chiba 277-8568, Japan

Abstract: The purpose of this study is to evaluate a dynamic scheduling-based nursing support system for nurses working in acute care. Due to unpredictable occurrences such as random disturbances from patients and the variability of processing times in nursing care, inpatient nursing in practical environments is complex. In this study, we implement a nursing support system in a series of laboratory experiments under simulated conditions. In the laboratory experiments, clinical nurses are asked to perform assigned nursing tasks and simulated patients are used to make the environment realistic. Our results show that, compared to the nurses' performance based on their own procedures (rules of action), the dynamic scheduling method resulted in an average improvement of 71% in terms of earliness or tardiness of care. The proposed dynamic scheduling-based nursing support system is proven to be highly applicable to nursing work in practical nursing care environments.

Keywords: nursing care; dynamic scheduling; planning; simulated annealing; in-patient nursing; behaviour analysis; replanning; skills evaluation; healthcare management; nursing support systems; acute care nurses; uncertainty.

DOI: 10.1504/IJAACS.2012.044783

International Journal of Autonomous and Adaptive Communications Systems, 2012 Vol.5 No.1, pp.39 - 57

Published online: 05 Dec 2014 *

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