Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
Review
. 2022 Dec 1;35(6):679-683.
doi: 10.1097/ACO.0000000000001189. Epub 2022 Oct 20.

Scheduling staff for ambulatory anaesthesia

Franklin Dexter  1 , Richard H Epstein  2
Affiliations
Review

Scheduling staff for ambulatory anaesthesia

Franklin Dexter et al. Curr Opin Anaesthesiol. .

Abstract

Purpose of review: In this study, we summarize six articles published from January 2020 through June 2022 covering anaesthesia staff scheduling and consider their relevance to ambulatory surgery. Staff scheduling refers to the planned shift length of each person working on specific dates.

Recent findings: Increasing shift lengths compensates for COVID-19 pandemic staffing issues by reducing patient queues and mitigating the impact of staff absence from SAR-CoV-2 infection. Reduced labour costs can often be achieved by regularly scheduling more practitioners than expected from intuition. Probabilities of unscheduled absences, estimated using historical data, should be incorporated into staff scheduling calculations. Anesthetizing locations, wherein anaesthesiologists are scheduled, may need to be revised if the practitioner is lactating to facilitate uninterrupted breast milk pumping sessions. If room assignments are based on the educational value for residents, then schedule other practitioners based on residents' expected work hours, not their planned shift lengths. Mixed integer programming can be used effectively to reduce variability among resident physicians in workloads during their rotations.

Summary: Readers can reasonably select among these studies and benefit from the one or two applicable to their facilities' characteristics and work hours.

PubMed Disclaimer

References

    1. Wang Z, Dexter F, Zenios SA. Caseload is increased by resequencing cases before and on the day of surgery at ambulatory surgery centers where initial patient recovery is in operating rooms and cleanup times are longer than typical. J Clin Anesth 2020; 67:110024.
    1. Rath S, Rajaram K. Staff planning for hospitals with implicit cost estimation and stochastic optimization. Prod Oper Manag 2022; 31:1271–1289.
    1. Dexter F, Epstein RH, Marian AA. Comparisons of unscheduled absences among categories of anesthesia practitioners, including anesthesiologists, nurse anesthetists, and anesthesia residents. Periop Care Oper Room Manag 2020; 21:100139.
    1. Titler SS, Dexter F, Epstein RH. Suggested work guidelines, based on operating room data, for departments with a breast milk pumping supervising anesthesiologist. Breastfeed Med 2021; 16:573–578.
    1. Titler SS, Dexter F, Epstein RH. Impact of anesthesia resident staff assignment decisions on nurse anesthetist and anesthesia resident staff scheduling and productivity: tutorial using data from a pediatric hospital. Periop Care Oper Room Manag 2021; 24:100182.