Scheduling nursing personnel on a microcomputer

Suggests that with the shortage of nursing personnel, hospital administrators have to pay more attention to the needs of nurses to retain and recruit them. Also asserts that improving nurses’ schedules is one of the most economic ways for the hospital administration to create a better working environment for nurses. Develops an algorithm for scheduling nursing personnel. Contrary to the current hospital approach, which schedules nurses on a person‐by‐person basis, the proposed algorithm constructs schedules on a day‐by‐day basis. The algorithm has inherent flexibility in handling a variety of possible constraints and goals, similar to other non‐cyclical approaches. But, unlike most other non‐cyclical approaches, it can also generate a quality schedule in a short time on a microcomputer. The algorithm was coded in C language and run on a microcomputer. The developed software is currently implemented at a leading hospital in Taiwan. The response to the initial implementation is quite promising.