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Staff scheduling in hospital emergency departments is challenging due to the uncertainty involved in the work needed to be performed, the high impact if the work is not performed, and the non-traditional working hours. Also, the desires of the stakeholder on what should be optimized may not be clear. This paper addresses the impacts of preferences in the staffing of emergency department nurses. The research uses data collected from a local hospital on patient flow to model nurse staffing. This model is used in an optimization framework where objective functions and constraints are varied to determine their impact on scheduling. Value models of patient care and wasted funds, as well as four constraints are explored in this research. The research concludes that understanding and representing the stakeholder's preference properly is critical in determining an optimal schedule. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]