Re: [Health-dev] [bug #46665] sex should not be required

[Marc Murray]

On Sat, 2015-12-12 at 11:21 +0000, Luis Falcon wrote:
> Follow-up Comment #1, bug #46665 (project health):
> 
> Although it can happen, in daily, interactive operation is statistically
> unremarkable. Most demographics are initially taken and reviewed in presence
> of the person, or automatically filled in at the moment of birth.
> 
> We should not put an option "Unknown", since it could lead to input errors and
> it clutters the selection option.
> 
> The scenario where we could not have the value is when doing batch input of
> demographic data coming from other system, and the value was not set at origin
> (because the field was not required ;-) ).
> 
> What we could do, is having a boolean field "Unknown sex", and use states in
> the sex field, setting it to required whenever the "unknown sex" field is
> False. 
> 
> Thoughts are most welcome.
> 
Just two comments from me:

ONE: Even though most demographics are collected interactively with the
patient present and conscious, some are not. We should not make those
other situations impossible to deal with. The input errors or cluttering
of the selection option are less of an issue than being able to
represent the truth.

TWO: Though rare, there are people born with confusing sex
characteristics. While it's okay to force these people to choose male or
female when building restrooms, it's not okay to force the doctor or
other health professional to choose because of a software limitation.
This could lead to inappropriate care or validation issues e.g. a female
with testicular issues.

Incidentally, this is one of the first customisations made for use in
Jamaica. We added unknown as the third option for sex. It is still
needed even if you make sex a non-required field.

Those are my thoughts on the issue. 

---
Marc





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