Nurse scheduling with fairness criteria for public hospital

Nurses are the main players in healthcare organization who provide services to the community round the clock. Thus, nurse duty roster is one of the most important components in healthcare to make sure a hospital or clinic provides satisfaction to their patient. In usual practice, the duty roster is built manually or partly-automated, and the fairness criteria are often neglected. These situations may lead to dissatisfaction among nurses. In this paper, we report the results of our investigation upon the process of nurse scheduling done in few Malaysian public hospitals. We also conducted a survey to collect a list of the most desired fairness criteria in building the schedule. Results of survey are presented and discussed.