Automatic Scheduling of Nurses: What Does It Take in Practice?

Many hospital wards need to be staffed by nurses around the clock every day of the week, and because of that, many nurses have to work irregular hours and according to schedules that have a great impact on their personal lives. Today there is a shortage of nurses in many countries, and in order to make the nursing profession more popular and to ensure high quality health care delivery, it is urgent to try to improve the working conditions for nurses. One possible and already ongoing improvement is that more flexibility and adaptation to personal requests is introduced in the scheduling.