The impact of incorporating nurse-specific characteristics in a cyclical scheduling approach

Nursing staff in various hospitals in Belgium are principally cyclically scheduled. The employed cyclic schedules embody, however, only a weak reflection of the ultimate nurse rosters constructed for a specific month. In this paper, we investigate the benefits of integrating nurse-specific characteristics in the cyclic scheduling approach. Moreover, we analyse to what extent these characteristics should be incorporated and compare this approach with a general and more robust cyclical scheduling approach and the flexible acyclical rostering of nursing personnel. Journal of the Operational Research Society (2009) 60, 1683-1698. doi: 10.1057/jors.2008.131 Published online 17 December 2008