Table(s) Design

[dar]

For the most part, I understand Access, and this web site has helped in the
coding problems, which have been greatly appreciated. My "MAIN" shortfall,
is in the very basic Normalization of tables. Here is my situation.
Nursing Home atmosphere. Rehab Depart. Patient's may be
admitted/discharged then readmitted several times. They have a unique Med
Rec #.
The depts in question use 3 major forms that are filled in and placed in
patient's chart. Evaluation form, Progress Notes, and Discharge form.
The patient is admitted and I type in pertinent info.
The doctor's may then write up orders for the patient, which I record,
which results in each patient having several orders.
Here are the major fields.

Med Rec Number, FN, LN, Date Admitted, Floor, Therapy, Therapist, Dr:

The forms have many unrelated fields depending on therapy.
I used many labels, checkboxes, combo/list boxes per therapy.
I made the mistake of making one huge table that has every field available
and
creating forms from that table. Now I need to do it right.

Another problem is the Date changes with each order, and the floor could
also change throughout the patient's stay.
This is long-winded and I'm sorrry, but a push in the right direction is
needed.
Thanks

 

[Jeff Boyce]

Dar

Depending on which country this medical practice is run in, you may have
some "strenuous" recording/reporting requirements/limitations set by law --
check before you get too far!

Consider turning off your computer, gathering all the forms and reports, and
sitting down with a pencil and paper. Regardless of how the forms and
reports are "organized" (you did say "unrelated", right?), they all contain
data. Start by creating buckets into which you will pour like items (er,
data).

For instance, you've described that you have Patients. In addition to their
unique ID#s, I'll bet they have names, DOBs, current address, phone number,
.... and several other attributes/characteristics you need to keep track of.
These are facts related to the Patient, and will go, as fields, into the
Patient bucket (er, table).

You described visits (oops, Visits) as something about which you want to
track facts. Perhaps who came, who saw, when it happened, what was
diagnosed, what was recommended, ... These seem to be facts about visits,
as fields in the Visits table.

You're closer to your situation, so you have a better handle on what other
buckets you'll need. "Normalization" is a semi-formal process that starts
with the buckets. You can find more by searching Access HELP, the Microsoft
site, and Google.com.

Good luck!

Jeff Boyce
<Access MVP>