Finding the sweet spot: how to get the right staffing for variable workloads
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Estimate the Cognitive Load Using Electrocardiographic Measure: A Human-AI Collaborative Task
Published on: December 5, 2025
David J Bryce1, Taylor J Christensen
1Department of Organizational Leadership and Strategy, Marriott School of Management, Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah, USA. dbryce@byu.edu
Abstract:
All too often, hospital department managers set their staff schedules too much in anticipation of high levels of demand for services, leading to higher-than-necessary staffing costs when demand is lower than expected. The opposite approach of scheduling too few staff to meet demand, then relying on on-call or callback staff to address the shortage, also results in higher-than-necessary costs due to the premium wages that such staff must be paid. A staffing and workload simulation tool allows hospital departments to find the right balance between these extremes.
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