Measuring and predicting adaptation in multidimensional activity-travel patterns

2+131hlm.;24c

Taxonomic classification of planning decisions in health care: a review of the state of the art in OR/MS

We provide a structured overview of the typical decisions to be made in resource capacity planning and control in health care, and a review of relevant OR/MS articles for each planning decision. The contribution of this paper is twofold. First, to position the planning decisions, a taxonomy is presented. This taxonomy provides health care managers and OR/MS researchers with a method to identify, break down and classify planning and control decisions. Second, following the taxonomy, for six health care services, we provide an exhaustive specification of planning and control decisions in resource capacity planning and control. For each planning and control decision, we structurally review the key OR/MS articles and the OR/MS methods and techniques that are applied in the literature to support decision making

The Human Activity-Travel Rescheduling Decision Process

Over the past few decades the activity scheduling decision process has become an important topic for transportation researchers, including how people reschedule their daily activities and travel in reaction to change. Rescheduling decisions include modifications/updates to timing, location/route, involved persons, event/mode type, and other attributes of activities/trips, as well as addition and deletion of completely new events. Such decisions occur as part of an ongoing process over time, space and across individuals. This thesis developed and applied a new data collection methodology for exploring the rescheduling decision process. The methodology had four main stages: capturing preplanned schedules; Global Positioning System (GPS) tracking; an internetbased prompted recall diary; and a final open-ended in-depth interview to explore how and why rescheduling decisions were made. A total of 40 subjects participated in the study from the Kitchener/Waterloo area of Ontario, Canada. Results strongly suggest the development of a preplan is an on-going process, wherein tentative decisions on many attributes are often made (leaving them partially elaborated on the preplan), and that certain attributes (end times, involved persons) are more likely to evolve over a longer time period, whereas others (start time, activity/mode type, and location) are planned in advance and not likely to be elaborated upon. With regard to subsequent rescheduling decisions, the methodology was able to elicit a much greater number and variety of activity conflicts and modifications from subjects compared to previous studies. The causes of these rescheduling changes also varied substantially beyond the typical activity “p;conflicts” considered in existing models, particularly interpersonal and personal impetuses of change. Past time-geography concepts are supported by these results, although there are some aspects that are unique to these rescheduling decisions. Previous conceptualizations of the activity scheduling process can also be elaborated upon given these findings. Methodologically, the strengths of this study include the successful capturing of preplans (especially partial elaboration), utilization of GPS technologies to reduce the burden of capturing observed activity-travel patterns, and the ability to fully detail each rescheduling decisions through the open ended final interview

Rescheduling sudden absences of nursing staff in hospital settings

The aim of this study is to evaluate the management of sudden absences of nursing staff in hospital settings. In addition, this study aims to describe nurse managers’ daily work regarding rescheduling due to sudden absences of nursing staff, from the perspectives of using a paper-based system or an IT-based rescheduling solution. The dissertation also includes an analysis of experiences of nursing staff floating. In Phase I, a scoping review was carried out to identify the IT-based rescheduling solutions for the daily rescheduling of nursing staff in a hospital setting, and rescheduling outcomes for patients, nursing staff and originations. In Phase II, a developed IT-based rescheduling solution was implemented at one university hospital department and a quasi-experimental pre- and post-test design was used to evaluate the nurse managers’ (n=17) work tasks with the Rescheduling Task Survey (RTS) during the rescheduling process of nursing staff. The quasi-experimental pre- and post-test design was repeated with a large sample of nurse managers (n=61), and the duration of the rescheduling process was observed. The usability of the IT-based rescheduling solution was evaluated with the System Usability Scale (SUS). In Phase III, the associations between stress, psychosocial factors and floating experience among nursing staff (n=1336) was evaluated, and the experiences nursing staff (n=747) with floating shifts during the past year were described. There is limited research on IT-based rescheduling staffing solutions and their outcomes for nursing staff, organizations and patients. Before and after implementation, the IT-based rescheduling solution nurse managers reported a total of 2,612 sudden absences with 5,800 rescheduling tasks such as phone calls and conversations. The main reason for sudden absence was unplanned sick leave (79%). After the implementation of the IT-based rescheduling solution, nurse managers’ rescheduling tasks, unstaffed and unplanned shift changes, the use of float pool nurses and floating nurses increased significantly. The implementation of the IT-based rescheduling process also revealed significant cost saving opportunities for hospitals. During this study’s short follow-up period, altogether €31,878 was saved with the use of floating nurses to cover sudden absences. There are no previous studies investigating floating and its association with stress among nursing staff. In this study, reported experience of stress did not differ significantly between participants with or without floating experience. However, there are factors related to floating that increase stress among nurses. Nurse managers need to ensure clear instructions for floating shifts on their units and that those instructions are followed.Hoitohenkilökunnan äkillisten poissaolojen hallinta sairaaloissa Tämän tutkimuksen tarkoituksena oli analysoida hoitotyön esimiesten päivittäiseen resursointiin liittyvää työtä, heidän korvatessaan hoitajien äkillisiä poissaoloja. Päivittäisen resursoinnin prosessia tutkittiin ennen ja jälkeen sähköisen resursointisovelluksen käyttöönottoa. Lisäksi kartoitettiin hoitohenkilökunnan kokemuksia koetusta stressistä sekä tehdyistä lainavuoroista. Lainavuoroilla tässä tutkimuksessa tarkoitetaan työvuoroa, jossa hoitaja siirtyy tilapäisesti toiseen yksikköön tekemään suunnitellun työvuoronsa, mikäli oman yksikön tilanne sen sallii. Tämä tutkimus toteutettiin kolmessa vaiheessa. Tutkimuksen ensimmäisessä vaiheessa toteutettiin kirjallisuuskatsaus, jonka avulla kartoitettiin päivittäiseen resursointiin soveltuvia sovelluksia sekä päivittäisen resursoinnin seurauksia potilaalle, hoitohenkilökunnalle ja organisaatiolle. Toisessa vaiheessa implementoitiin kehitetty päivittäisen resursoinnin sovellus yhden yliopistollisen sairaalan toimialueelle. Lisäksi hoitotyön lähijohtajien (n=17) käyttämiä työsuoritteita arvioitiin ennen ja jälkeen päivittäiseen resursointiin tarkoitetun sovelluksen käyttöönottoa. Tutkimus toistettiin suuremmalla otoksella (n=61), lisäksi työsuoritteiden ajallinen kesto arvioitiin havainnoinnin avulla sekä päivittäisen resursoinnin sovelluksen käytettävyys arvioitiin. Tutkimuksen kolmannessa vaiheessa tutkittiin hoitajien (n=1336) koetun stressin, työn psyykkisten ja sosiaalisten tekijöiden sekä lainavuorokokemusten välistä yhteyttä. Tutkimustulokset osoittivat, että päivittäiseen resursointiin soveltuvia järjestelmiä on kuvattu vähän ja tietoa päivittäisen resursoinnin seurauksista on saatavilla rajoitetusti, erityisesti potilaiden näkökulmasta. Tässä tutkimuksessa hoitotyön esimiehet raportoivat yhteensä 2612 äkillistä poissaoloa, joiden pääasiallinen syy oli äkillinen sairausloma (79 %). Työsuoritteita, esim. puhelu tai keskustelu, raportoitiin yhteensä 5800. Päivittäiseen resursointiin tarkoitetun sovelluksen käyttöönoton jälkeen esimiesten työsuoritteet vähenivät merkitsevästi, kuin myös aliresursoidut työvuorot ja hoitohenkilökunnan äkilliset työvuorojen vaihdot. Myös vara- ja lainahenkilöstön käyttö tehostui. Sovelluksen käyttöönotto toi sairaaloille myös kustannussäästöjä; seuranta-ajan (neljä viikkoa) aikana kustannussäästöjä syntyi yhteensä 31 878 euroa. Tämän tutkimuksen mukaan lainavuorokokemus ei lisännyt hoitajien kokemaa stressiä. Sen sijaan lainavuoroon liittyy tekijöitä, jotka stressaavat hoitajia. Hoitotyön esimiesten tulee varmistaa, että lainavuoromallille on laadittu selkeät ohjeet, joita yksiköissä noudatetaan

Multi-day activity scheduling reactions to planned activities and future events in a dynamic agent-based model of activity-travel behavior

Modeling multi-day planning has received scarce attention today in activity-based transport demand modeling. Elaborating and combining previous work on event-driven activity generation, the aim of this paper is to develop and illustrate an extension of a need-based model of activity generation that takes into account possible influences of pre-planned activities and events. This paper describes the theory and shows the results of simulations of the extension. The simulation was conducted for six different activities and parameter values. The results show that the model works well and that the influences of the parameters are consistent, logical and have clear interpretations. These findings offer further evidence of face and construct validity to the suggested modeling approach

Reforming Agricultural Development Banks

The issue of agricultural development banking discussed in this paper has a history to it. For a hundred years or more, until the middle of the 20th century, a small number of agricultural banks existed outside of Europe. During that period, 15.5% of the banks in the AgriBank-Stat inventory, were established.1 Some seem to have led an inconspicuous life, like the predecessors of the Agricultural Cooperative Bank in Syria and the Agricultural Credit Corporation in Jordan, established in 1888. Others, like the predecessor of Bank Rakyat Indonesia dating back to 1885, were at the center of lively debates over such issues as centralized vs. decentralized rural banking; the role of the government as a decision-maker vs. the people themselves, perhaps organized in cooperatives; and banking in kind vs. banking in money.3 However, whatever lessons might have been drawn from that experience appear to be lost in history. --

Design of stated adaptation experiments: discussion of some issues and experiences

Rescheduling of daily activities and associated travel in response to unforeseen events such as travel delays is receiving increased attention in the context of traffic management. In this paper, we describe the results of a stated adaptation experiment held among a large sample of individuals through a web-based questionnaire, to estimate parameters of such dynamic behaviour. In the experiment, subjects indicated their response to a reduction in available time for a planned activity in a number of hypothetical situations. A mixed logit model was used to estimate subjective preferences for adapting in certain ways conditional upon activity attributes and socio-economic variables. The results indicate that location and transport-mode adaptations are rare compared to duration adjustment or postponing/cancelling the activity, dependent on the relative size of reduced time. Socio-economic variables and activity attributes play a significant role too