Constructing nurse schedules at large hospitals

Abstract

Several heuristics, based on evolutive algorithms and local search, are used to solve the nurse scheduling problem at a large hospital. Due to several intricate and specific restrictions imposed on the schedules, the problem is a difficult one to solve by hand. Moreover, some of the restrictions have a subjective value attached to them, and this constrains the use of exact methods that search for global optima. In order to facilitate the use of the solver modules by the hospital staff, a user interface was also implemented.