[AccessD] 2 quick questions

Susan Harkins ssharkins at gmail.com
Thu May 26 15:48:21 CDT 2011


The same problem will exist with a lookup interface, but the potential error 
will be more obvious--hopefully. If you force the user to create the id on 
the fly, they're liable to generate an id that exists for someone else and 
never even know it.

Joe T Murphy  born on Dec 7th, 1994
Tom M Murphy albo born on Dec 7, 1994

So Joe T. comes in at 14 and gives his name as Tom Murphy,

the user plugs in

MURTO?120794

which pulls up MURTOM120794

when Joe's id is actually

MURJOT120794

but the user isn't paying attention and loads away...of course, you could 
build in protection, but the potential's there.

You'll have the same problem with a lookup interface, but at least, it will 
be more obvious that there's more than one Murphy on the same birthdate --  
not sure how to avoid a problem like this other than having other than 
forcing the user to ask for more information when there's more than one 
record that might fulfill a request. "I have two Murphy's born on that 
date -- can I have your full name please?" -- interesting problem.

Don't these folks have a patient id? How would the dentist in question 
identify the two patients -- what criteria are they currently using?

I have this sort of problem a lot -- even when I write my name down, people 
have trouble with it and want to pull up records for Susan Hawkins, Susan 
Parkins, Susan Haskins -- happens to me all the time. So, this is really 
more than a database design problem.

Susan H.


>
> I am also doing quite a bit with company/individual name and address 
> matching...and you gave the perfect example that causes issues:
> Joe T Murphy, born on Dec 7th, 1994
>
> Age 5 Joe comes in...age 10 Joseph comes in...age 14...he switched to 
> using his middle name in high school.
>
> I don't remember who suggested it...but I liked the idea of the lookup in 
> the interface to choose the existing patient.
>
>>
>> What Susan is trying to say politely is that you're making work for
>> yourself. Your users don't need to see the unique identifier, they
>> need to see the information on the client. So provide them with a
>> fill in textbox or two to enter a name and then show them a list of
>> the clients showing name, last visit, etc., and let them select the
>> one they want to see. They may THINK they need a shortcut ID, but
>> that leads to other shortcuts that lead to corrupted records and data.
>> They try to memorize IDs to speed things up and it gets them in
>> trouble.
>>
>> Charlotte Foust




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