The purpose of this study is to evaluate a dynamic scheduling-based nursing support system for nurses working in acute care. Due to unpredictable occurrences such as random disturbances from patients and the variability of processing times in nursing care, inpatient nursing in practical environments is complex. In this study, we implement a nursing support system in a series of laboratory experiments under simulated conditions. In the laboratory experiments, clinical nurses are asked to perform assigned nursing tasks and simulated patients are used to make the environment realistic. Our results show that, compared to the nurses' performance based on their own procedures (rules of action), the dynamic scheduling method resulted in an average improvement of 71% in terms of earliness or tardiness of care. The proposed dynamic scheduling-based nursing support system is proven to be highly applicable to nursing work in practical nursing care environments. Copyright © 2012 Inderscience Enterprises Ltd.