Re: [Gnumed-devel] patient search functionality revisited

[Ian Haywood]

On Sat, 4 Jan 2003 19:06:26 +1100
Horst Herb <address@hidden> wrote:

> On Fri, 3 Jan 2003 23:56, Karsten Hilbert wrote:
> > Same in Thailand. Are you saying nickname use is so prominent
> > in Australia that Australian docs will want to be able to type
> > the nickname to pull up the record at the time the patient
> 
> Yes. If you shout their "legal" name into the waiting room, chances are they 
> either don't react at all or it takes some time to realize that it is "them". 
> Many use their nick name literally to exclusion.
> 

The situation I was worried about was the reverse: patients who, at data entry, 
give
their nickname, so a search on their legal name fails. One solution 
would be to flag common nicknames at data entry. 

(Having said that, some younger Australians take it one step further. They are 
named at birth 
by what is traditionally considered a nickname
i.e a nickname *is* their legal name! "Faye" (= Faith) and "Cilla" (= 
Priscilla) are
two examples from my graduating class.)

The search function should, as a last step, try swapping known nicknames with 
proper names,
or vice  versa, to find a match.

Ian

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