Brief description of the PhD project:

PhD on the topic of "Integrating Caregivers' Preferences in Routing for Home Healthcare Services" [working title]

Caregivers in home healthcare face significant pressure in their daily work: tight schedules, congested roads, and varying places of care delivery often lead to stress, dissatisfaction and change of job. To retain caregivers in the profession and improve their job satisfaction, new approaches to operational planning are needed - approaches that take caregivers' individual needs more seriously into account.In my PhD project "Integrating Caregivers' Preferences in Routing for Home Healthcare Services", we investigate how individual preferences of caregivers can be systematically identified and integrated into route planning. These preferences may relate to the types of tasks performed, but also to the nature of the travel itself. To collect these preferences, we conduct a choice-based preference elicitation study, which enables a qualitative, empirical analysis of both individual and group-specific preferences. The insights gained serve as the foundation for developing a preference-based optimization model that aims to support fairer and more satisfying route planning. By placing greater emphasis on individual needs, our goal is to increase job satisfaction and contribute to a more sustainable organization of home healthcare services in the long term.