Nurse scheduling models: a state-of-the-art review

Nursing salaries make up the largest single element in hospital costs. Thus, effective scheduling of nursing personnel is important in controlling health-care costs. Scheduling nurses in hospitals is a complex problem due to variability in demand and a variety of conflicting interests and objectives. This article reviews the models that have been developed for nurse scheduling, including heuristic-, optimization- and artificial intelligence-based models. The approaches and limitations of these models are discussed, and a direction for future research is identified.