Impact of healthcare worker shift scheduling on workforce preservation during the COVID-19 pandemic

Dan M Kluger; Yariv Aizenbud; Ariel Jaffe; Lilach Aizenbud; Fabio Parisi; Eyal Minsky-Fenick; Jonathan M Kluger; Shelli Farhadian; Harriet M Kluger; Yuval Kluger

One way to reduce infection rates is to optimize staff scheduling to minimize interactions between different HCWs and limit the patient pool to which HCWs are exposed. Despite reports of nosocomial infections, infection of HCWs by patients, and transmission of SARS-CoV-2 from one HCW to another, little is known about the effects of HCW team structure on hospital transmission of SARS-CoV-2. [2, 3] Experience from other pandemics is not necessarily applicable, as infection and fatality rates are different. We therefore ran Monte Carlo simulations to explore various staffing possibilities with the goal of identifying staffing structures to minimize infections among HCWs on non-COVID-19 wards. For COVID-19 wards, in which the rate of patient-to-HCW transmission depends on personal protective equipment (PPE) and types of procedures and patient encounters, alternative input parameters for such simulations are needed;