Nurse scheduling on a microcomputer

A computer package for solving the problem of shift scheduling for nurses in a hospital unit has been developed. There are two main modules in the package: (1) the survey module, which is designed to query the nurses and the supervisor to obtain information about nurse preferences and unit requirements and to produce the input file for the scheduler; (2) the scheduler module, which creates and solves (approximately) an optimization problem and hence generates the desired shift schedules for the individual nurses. A description of the package and its implementation on an Apple Macintosh computer is given here.