ORAHS2024
Abstract Submission

91. Time-and-motion studies in healthcare: a systematic literature review

Contributed abstract in session HC-4: Healthcare Management /2, stream Regular talks.

Thursday, 14:00-15:30
Room: Room S3

Authors (first author is the speaker)

1. Louis Niffoi
Laboratoire de Génie Industriel, CentraleSupélec
2. Oualid Jouini
Laboratoire Genie Industriel, Ecole Centrale Paris
3. Marija Jankovic
Laboratoire de Génie Industriel, CentraleSupélec, University of Paris Saclay
4. Pierre-François Ceccaldi
Service de Gynécologie-Obstétrique et Médecine de la reproduction, Hôpital Foch
5. Guillaume Lamé
Laboratoire de Génie Industriel, CentraleSupélec

Abstract

The recent ‘Behavioural OR’ movement has reinstated the importance of realistic modelling of human behaviour in OR. In particular, knowing what activities healthcare staff perform and how their working time is distributed is crucial to build reliable models. Time-and-motion studies (TMS) are the gold standard for obtaining this information. In this review, we analyse where and how TMS have been used in healthcare.
We aimed to include journal articles reporting independent and continuous observation of the activities conducted by healthcare professionals over a period of time, published post-2000, in English. We searched PubMed, Scopus, and the Web of Science, and also included the references from 4 previous reviews as well as the articles that cited them. We obtained 5,680 articles.
Two researchers independently screened 10% of the articles based on title and abstract. Agreement was very good (Cohen’s k = 0.84). One reviewer screened the remaining articles, and we included 889 articles for full-text assessment. After 10% double-screening, agreement was excellent (k = 0.94). One reviewer completed full-text screening. We included 189 articles.
We extracted information on the objectives of the studies, the setting and profession of participants, and the research process. We analysed the results quantitatively to provide recommendations on the conduct and reporting of TMS, and discuss how these types of studies can be integrated with OR modelling.

Keywords

Status: accepted


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