An Enhanced Cyclic Descent Algorithm for Nurse Rostering

The study introduces an enhanced cyclic descent algorithm for nurse rostering. The algorithm is compared to four other rostering algorithms and to manually generated roster solutions obtained from the Gold Coast Hospital. Three criteria are developed with which the roster generation methods are assessed: these are roster schedule quality, roster shift allocation quality and execution time. A statistical analysis shows that the enhanced cyclic descent algorithm has the best overall performance. An integer linear programming algorithm and an enhanced simulated annealing algorithm are also shown to perform well with smaller problems.