Dragonfly Algorithm Application for Solving the Nurse Scheduling Problem

Scheduling plays a crucial role in allocating re-sources to tasks in various domains, including healthcare. Nurse scheduling, in particular, presents significant challenges due to the limited number of nurses. This paper illustrates how a novel meta-heuristic model known as Dragonfly Algorithm (DA) is used to efficiently solve the nurse scheduling problem faced by a major hospital in Belgium. The DA, inspired by the swarming behaviours of dragonflies, offers a new approach to solving this problem. The algorithm's effectiveness is evaluated using Shift Scheduling Benchmark Datasets, and the results show its potential for generating nurse schedules with reduced penalties.