A multi-objective approach to nurse scheduling with both hard and soft constraints

Solving the nurse scheduling problem properly has a great impact on nurses' working conditions which are strongly related to the level of quality of health care and recruiting of qualified personnel. In this paper, a multi-objective approach is shown to be a very flexible tool for modeling this problem. Hence, it could be used in several specific contexts. Three different solution techniques are also summarized. The approach is illustrated with an example, and numerical results are reported. Copyright © 1996 Elsevier Science Ltd.