Hospital management has faced a shortage of nurses since the end of 1986. This dissertation addresses the relative efficacy of nurse staffing policy options available to hospital managers for providing patient care given a constrained labor environment.

The referent system for this dissertation is a 600-bed not-for-profit hospital in the State of Florida. Data pertaining to the recommended and actual number of nursing hours provided, labor hour availability, desired mix of nursing staff, hourly wage rates, and supplemental staffing was collected for fiscal year 1989.

A linear programming (LP) nurse staffing model serves as the research vehicle for this dissertation. The input parameters for the model are based on the fiscal year data collected from the hospital. The LP model is executed under a variety of parameter settings to examine the effect of six design variables on total nursing labor costs.

Desired service level, an administratively controllable design variable was found to have the most significant effect on total nursing labor costs. The desired staffing mix was identified as to be the most important managerially controllable design variable for impacting total nursing labor costs.

The implications of this dissertation for hospital management and manpower planning research are outlined in detail. In addition, several suggestions for extending this research are presented.