Chemotherapy appointment scheduling under uncertainty by considering workload balance among nurses

Balancing nurse workload while scheduling outpatient chemotherapy appointments under uncertainty is a challenging problem. In this study, a two-stage stochastic mixed-integer programming model is proposed for setting appointment times of patients and assigning patients to chairs and nurses without distorting the workload balance among nurses. The uncertainty in pre-medication and infusion durations is considered. The objective function of the model minimizes the expected weighted sum of patient waiting time and nurse overtime. Computational experiments are conducted based on data from an outpatient chemotherapy unit of a large hospital. The trade-off between the two competing criteria of the study is investigated. The relationship between the numbers of chairs and nurses in the clinic with the performance measures is examined. The benefit of considering uncertainty is assessed by calculating the value of stochastic solution