Re: [Gnumed-devel] Medication lists - when 'started' is uncertain

[Busser, Jim]

was Re: [Gnumed-devel] Medication lists

On 2013-07-13, at 4:29 PM, Jim Busser <address@hidden> wrote:

>> clin_when … which itself is strongly desired to be non-NULL.
> 
> … or
> 
> (2) require the user, in every case of uncertainty, to assign a false value 
> and a misleading certainty of some exact date, and with no indication (or 
> annotation, much less visual indicator) as to the uncertainty of what has 
> been entered.

Do I recall correctly that

- inheritance in Postgres requires the child table to possess the same columns 
as the parent table (therefore, under pg inheritance, clin_when shall have to 
remain non-NULL)

- BUT the child table is permitted to contain additional columns (not in common 
with the parent table) and so we could, by such means, support in

        clin.substance_intake

a boolean column, roughly named anything like one of

        quasi_started
        is_uncertain
        is_approximate

default FALSE however the clinician can via the GUI thusly flag the

        started

date as uncertain. This would make it manageable, in cases of uncertainly, to 
set the date started only to the level that the patient's recollection 
warrants. For example, if a patient told me that they had started a medication

        "in April, I think"

I can in put the above as

        2013-04-01 is_uncertain

and that way I can, many months from now, suspect there is a good chance that 
it was in March or April or May that the patient began the medication. If OTOH 
the patient told me they had begun it "2 or 3 years ago" I would likely prefer 
to input

        2011-01-01 is_uncertain

-- Jim