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Reducing neonatal intensive care transports by introducing a regional nurse flex pool

Morris, K.J.C. (2021) Reducing neonatal intensive care transports by introducing a regional nurse flex pool.

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Abstract:The Dutch neonatal intensive care (NIC) network has nine NIC units, for which nursing capacity is scarce. As a result, patients are often rejected and transferred to other centers or even abroad. This places a heavy burden on patients, their family, and involved caregivers. Given the limited distances between the centers in the Netherlands, the idea arose to not move patients but instead share nurses between NIC centers. This study provides a quantitative basis to support the discussion on whether a flex pool of nurses should be implemented. We have created a discrete event simulation and incorporated an integer linear problem to optimally allocate incoming patients and flex nurses to NIC locations. The main objective of the integer linear problem is to minimise travel distance for patients and nurses. This study is performed in close collaboration with the Wilhelmina Children's Hospital and uses real life data obtained from the neonatal network in the Netherlands, and particularly its capacity dashboard tool BabyZoektBed. The computational results show great improvement potential in terms of reducing the transfers of newly arrived patients, even for a low number of flex nurses. The model can be easily adjusted to make all kinds of what if analyses.
Item Type:Essay (Master)
Clients:
Wilhelmina Children's Hospital, Utrecht, The Netherlands
Faculty:BMS: Behavioural, Management and Social Sciences
Subject:31 mathematics, 85 business administration, organizational science
Programme:Industrial Engineering and Management MSc (60029)
Link to this item:https://purl.utwente.nl/essays/88967
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