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The nurse scheduling problem (NSP) consists of generating a work schedule for nursing staff in a hospital. The approach presented in this paper considers a multi-objective NSP involving the nurses’ preferences. These preferences are modelled by fuzzy sets and aggregated to determine an overall preference cost function. The schedules are generated by a hybrid approach based on an interactive sequential multi-objective problem solving method combined with a genetic algorithm (GA). The head nurse is identified as the decision maker. Different versions of the GA are developed to test the efficiency of the approach. The results reveal that the proposed approach generates good quality solutions and due to its flexibility may be applicable in real-life NSPs. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]