ABSTRACT
Healthcare systems operate in a dynamic and imprecise environment. Unanticipated events may lead to complex schedule disruptions (Moz and Pato, 2004; Knighton, 2005; Maenhout and Vanhoucke, 2011). For instance, a nurse scheduled to work in a specific shift may not be available due to unforeseen absences (Ritchie et al., 1999; Aickelin and Dowsland, 2000; Corominas and Pastor, 2010). As a result, decision makers often find it necessary to reconstruct the nurse schedules, a process known as nurse rerostering (Moz and Pato, 2007). This essentially involves reassigning shifts to available nurses, beginning from the first day of reported absence, while respecting pertinent constraints and the reported absences.
