Re: One to One relationships

> Are you sure that patients only have one chart forever? Suppose a
> patient is discharged and then readmitted for an unrelated illness.
> Don't they then get a new chart?

I suppose terminology may vary. I'm using the word "chart" in the same way as "medical record": the collection of a patient's history and statistics. In the real world scenarios behind my example (and we're pretending we're a medical practice rather than a hospital which might not expect the same ongoing relationship with it's average patient), there should be no more than one of these to a patient registration. The physical chart will contain the patient's paper history which may well be represented in a database by several tables: cases, referrals, etc.

In practice, due to things like demographic chages and bad registration practice (using Bob instead of Robert), duplicate patient registrations and charts, the resulting splits in patients' medical histories, and the administrative chore of merging them back together are not uncommon. But that's another issue. Received on Thu May 01 2003 - 06:36:47 CEST