Modeling Nurse Time for School Health Service using System Dynamics
Zuraida Abal Abas1, Zaheera Zainal Abidin2, Mohamad Raziff Ramli3

1Zuraida Abal Abas*, (OptiMAS), Faculty of Information Communication and Technology, Universiti Teknikal Malaysia Melaka, Hang Tuah Jaya,  Durian Tunggal, Melaka Malaysia.
2Zaheera Zainal Abidin, (INSFORNET), Faculty of Information Communication and Technology, Universiti Teknikal Malaysia Melaka, Hang Tuah Jaya, Durian Tunggal, Melaka Malaysia.
3Mohamad Raziff Ramli, (OptiMAS), Faculty of Information Communication and Technology, Universiti Teknikal Malaysia Melaka, Hang Tuah Jaya,  Durian Tunggal, Melaka Malaysia.

Manuscript received on September 16, 2019. | Revised Manuscript received on 24 September, 2019. | Manuscript published on October 10, 2019. | PP: 3277-3284 | Volume-8 Issue-12, October 2019. | Retrieval Number: L280010812192019©BEIESP | DOI: 10.35940/ijitee.L2800.1081219
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© The Authors. Blue Eyes Intelligence Engineering and Sciences Publication (BEIESP). This is an open access article under the CC-BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/)

Abstract: One of the national primary health care services in Malaysia is school health care. This care is very crucial as it ensures that, countrywide, the health of students from the age of five to fifteen is in a good condition. In Malaysia, nurses hold a major responsibility for delivering the school health service. However, there is no solid research investigating the nursing time required to deliver school health services. This paper presents a system dynamics model representing the specific school health services delivered by nurses. System Dynamics is a computer-aided approach to policy analysis and design. In this paper, the system dynamics model are represented by several causal loop diagrams which covers all the school health activities and is able to determine the projected total nurse time required in delivering the service. The baseline simulation result of the nurse time required for delivering school health services is about 1080000 hours in year 2030, which is equivalent to 680 full time equivalent (FTE) nurses. Furthermore, various what-if analyses are tested with the model, as it is important for policy makers to investigate various scenarios for an effective decision-making process. In other words, the theme of the study is to understand the implication of the changes in school population size and the modification of certain activities in the school health program on the nurse time spent delivering school health service by developing a dedicated forecasting system dynamics model for school health. The time horizon for the forecasting is from 2018 until 2030.
Keywords: Modeling, Simulation, School Health, System Dynamics, Nurse Time, Forecasting.
Scope of the Article: Network Modelling and Simulation