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

Abstract

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.

Keywords:

• manpower planning
• hospitals
• timetabling
• scheduling

Acknowledgements

We acknowledge the support given to this project by the ‘Bijzonder Onderzoeksfonds (BOF), Ghent University, Belgium’ under the contract number B/04668/01. Furthermore, we would like to thank Filip Demeyere, nursing director, and Denis Goeminne, department head internal medicine, for their collaboration and useful information and giving us the permission to obtain insight in a real-life problem environment. Moreover, we would like to thank all head nurses who participated in this study.