Optimization of clinical teaching unit call schedules at the Ottawa hospital through tabu search heuristics.

The task of scheduling medical staff for evening rounds in the Clinical Teaching Unit of the Ottawa Hospital is a long complicated task due to its complexity. Three main classifications of staff, combined with various rotations, skill sets, clinical teams and vacation periods have combined to create a difficult scheduling problem. As there were no commercial packages available to solve this particular task, a study was made of heuristic scheduling and optimization techniques and a program based on a variation of the tabu search heuristic was written and tested. This system is being used to schedule medical staff at the Ottawa Hospital.