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

Nursing staff is principally cyclically scheduled in various hospitals in Belgium. 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 analyze 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.