MPH 598 Week 3 Constraint Analysis Example

Constraint Analysis: Why Fixing My Three Nights in Place Beats Pharmacy Delivery, Batch Cooking and a Third School Pickup

Student Name

Chamberlain University

MPH 598: Student Success and Self-Care

Instructor Name

Month Day, Year

Constraint Analysis: Why Fixing My Three Nights in Place Beats Pharmacy Delivery, Batch Cooking and a Third School Pickup

The Question

Last week's audit showed that my committed hours as a respiratory therapist on rotating 12-hour nights, a parent and my grandmother's main helper leave about 194 hours over four weeks, but in fragments: only 11 blocks of two hours or more, most of them on two days a week. This analysis asks which single commitment, if changed, would add the most usable study time for the rest of the term. Usable here means blocks of at least two hours at a time of day when I am rested enough to read and write, since the audit showed that study in 20-minute fragments or in the afternoon after a night does not get done.

The Candidates, Drawn From the Ledger

Four candidates come straight from the audit's last column, each with its cost in an ordinary week.

Pharmacy delivery for my grandmother would remove about one hour a week of driving and waiting, since her prescriptions could arrive at her door.

Batch cooking on Sundays would remove about one hour a week of weeknight meal work, at the cost of two hours one Sunday afternoon in three.

A third school pickup by my partner would remove about one hour a week, if my partner could leave work early once more.

Fixed nights would mean asking my manager to schedule my three shifts on the same nights each week, Sunday, Monday and Tuesday, instead of rotating. It would not reduce my hours at all.

One Test, Applied to All of Them

The test is the number of usable two-hour blocks each change would add in an average week, set against what it costs and whose agreement it needs. Total hours saved is not the test, because the audit showed that freed hours mostly land in fragments.

Table 1

Candidate Changes Scored by Usable Study Blocks Added

Note. Note. Block estimates from mapping each change onto the writer's four-week calendar.

Why Fixed Nights Wins

Rotating nights scatter my recovery days across the week, so a non-shift day often follows a shift and becomes half a recovery day. When I mapped the last four weeks with a fixed Sunday-to-Tuesday pattern instead, my recovery sleep would fall on Monday to Wednesday mornings and my two full days would always be Thursday and Friday, with Saturday morning as a third partial day. That pattern yields about two more usable two-hour blocks each week, because days that are now split between recovery and life would become whole days. No other candidate adds even one block, because the hours they free arrive in small pieces on already-fragmented days.

There is also a health reason. Repeatedly shifting between night and day schedules is harder on sleep than a stable pattern, and exhaustion is the central strain in burnout (Maslach & Leiter, 2016). A fixed pattern does not shorten my nights, but it lets my body settle into a rhythm.

The Ones Passed Over Stay In

The other three candidates are not wrong; they simply do not add usable time. Pharmacy delivery may still be worth doing for my grandmother's sake, since it removes a risk of missed refills during weeks when I am short of sleep. Batch cooking could help in the last two weeks of term, when papers pile up. The third pickup is a favor to ask only if fixed nights are refused. Keeping them in the analysis means I have a second and third option if the first fails, rather than starting again.

Checking the Block Estimates

The block estimates in the table came from redrawing the last four weeks on paper under each change. For fixed nights, I moved each of my 12 shifts to the Sunday-to-Tuesday pattern, placed recovery sleep after each and counted the two-hour blocks that remained on rested days: 19, against 11 under the actual rotation, or about two more a week. For the other candidates, I removed the freed hour from the day it would fall on and checked whether it joined an existing gap to make a two-hour block. Only batch cooking did so, once in four weeks, which is where its half-block estimate comes from. The method is rough, because a real month would not repeat the last one exactly, but it applies the same rule to every candidate, which is what makes the comparison fair.

Whose Agreement It Needs

Fixed nights need two people. My manager sets the schedule, and the unit's practice is to rotate nights so that weekends are shared. I will ask for a fixed pattern for the remaining five weeks of term, not permanently, and offer to keep working one weekend night in four so that the weekend share stays fair. The colleague most affected is the therapist who now works most Sunday and Monday nights by choice; if the change takes one of her preferred nights, she gives something up.

Who Gives Up the Hours

This choice does not cost me hours, but it costs others flexibility. My manager loses some freedom to rotate staff, my colleague may lose a preferred night and my partner will carry the school mornings on my new recovery days, Monday to Wednesday. That last cost is real: my partner currently has those mornings free. We have agreed that I will take every Thursday and Friday morning instead, which balances the load. The analysis is only complete if those costs are acknowledged, and next week's script to my manager and my partner will need to say so in plain words.

What Would Change This Choice

If my manager refuses, the next option is to ask for nights in pairs, which still joins two recovery mornings and adds about one usable block. If both are refused, the third school pickup becomes the best remaining step, despite adding little, because it at least returns a rested morning once a week.

References

Maslach, C., & Leiter, M. P. (2016). Understanding the burnout experience: Recent research and its implications for psychiatry. World Psychiatry, 15(2), 103-111. https://doi.org/10.1002/wps.20311