Article ID: | iaor200971692 |
Country: | United Kingdom |
Volume: | 60 |
Issue: | 12 |
Start Page Number: | 1683 |
End Page Number: | 1698 |
Publication Date: | Dec 2009 |
Journal: | Journal of the Operational Research Society |
Authors: | Maenhout B, Vanhoucke M |
Keywords: | scheduling |
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.