A Two-Phase Approach to the Emergency Department Physician Rostering Problem

In this study, we address the physician rostering problem occurring in an Emergency Department of an Italian pediatric hospital. Motivated by the paramount importance that workload balance has in this setting, we propose a tailored two-phase approach and we present two optimization models on which the proposed approach is based. In the first phase, we assign all the weekend (and holidays) shifts to physicians in a medium-term planning horizon pursuing a fair distribution of weekend and night shifts among the physicians, whereas in the second phase, we assign all the weekday shifts to physicians in short-term planning horizons so that each physician works almost the same number of morning and afternoon shifts. We present preliminary results of an ongoing research whose ultimate goal is to develop a decision support system to facilitate the creation of physicians’ rosters.