Recommendation on setting up a table

[b_fedele]

Hi, I wanted somebody's elses recommendations on setting up a table (as I am relatively new to Access).

Here's my example: I have to enter clinical information of patients who undergo injections in different muscles of the body.

I have a list of different muscles of the body which are injected (around 25-30) (e.g. hamstring etc).

So I need to set up a table which whether each of these muscles were injected (yes/no), whether they were injected on the left or right side of the body (left/right) and what the dose was (units).

So far I think the only way to do it is have fields as follows: e.g. Hamstring

Field 1: HamstringInjected (yes/no)
Field 2: HamstringSide (left/right)
Field 3: HamstringDose (units)

But I think 3 fields for 25-30 muscles in the one table seems tedious. Could anyone advise any other way of doing this? The other option was to have all muscles listed within the one field where you can select more than one, however I need them in seperate fields. Thanks, I just wanted to run it by to see if anyone has another idea For those that reply, could you be quite basic as I'm still learning the ropes! Thank you!

 

[John Big Booty]

Welcome to the forum.

Perhaps you will find some guidance in one of the data models here.

 

[gemma-the-husky]

as patients may have multiple treatment sessions, i would probably be inclined to have these tables

- patients (with an autonumber ID)
- injection sites ( with an autonumber ID - and with a different entry for hamstring left, hamstring right)
- drugs ( with an autonumber id - problably with a different entry for eaxch different strength of drug - not sure what normal clinical method is)
- patient treatment sessions (with an autonumber id - ie patient id, date, notes)




and then
-patient treatment detail (- including patient session AND muscle injection AND Drug used - and at this level include details of dose etc, for each injection


using autonumber ids in these tables is more efficient - but importantly it would let you rename the drugs, or injection sites, without affecting the tables - eg lets say you want to use technical muscle names, rather than colloqiual ones. Using these lookup tables for drugs and injection sites retains the integrity of the data.

 

[b_fedele]

Thank you for your responses so far.

Gemma, the problem with having split it up into different tables as you suggested is that this is only one section of quite a large clinical form.

We are looking at putting this clinical form into *eventually* an online format. So ideally it should be within the one table or two at the most (splitting up upper limb/lower limb muscles into seperate tables).

I was thinking of splitting each muscles into left hamstring right hamstring format however would it be ok to keep it as one? I'm not too interested in the left/right side as seperate fields but rather the muscle overall. I think we just want frequency data of the side later on.

Any other suggestions with formatting? Thanks for replying!

 

[b_fedele]

Oh and also, because patients will be admitted more than once throughout the clinic I have used the autonumber field.

I've been suggested to have a main form with patient details and subforms for other sections of a clinical form which have an autoID variable and study number variable (primary key) which links it back to the main form.

Thanks!