Fair and Efficient Nurse Scheduling With Answer Set Programming in Hospital Practice: From Rules to Rosters

Effective nurse scheduling is essential for health care quality, staff well-being, and organizational efficiency. The Nurse Scheduling Problem (NSP) requires balancing regulatory limits, workload equity, and personal preferences. In this study, we report 2 real-world applications of Answer Set Programming for cyclic nurse scheduling in hospital departments in Cosenza, Italy. Constraints included national labor rules as well as local requirements such as spousal coordination and outpatient-only staff. Using ASP-based solvers, optimal monthly rosters were generated in under one second, satisfying all hard constraints and optimizing fairness in night-shift distribution and reserve usage. These results demonstrate that Answer Set Programming provides a fast, transparent, and adaptable solution for nurse managers, functioning as a practical decision-support tool to improve compliance, equity, and sustainability in workforce management.