Help for The RecordsKeeper Medical Conditions Screen
This screen permits you to record and maintain a history of your medical conditions. This could include but is not limited to childhood and other diseases, surgeries, test, procedures, accidents, allergies, phobias, genetic and any other conditions deemed relevant. It can also be used to make note of emerging conditions that you may want to discuss with your physician at a future time.
Its purpose is to provide a recorded history of such conditions that you have or have experienced for use when visiting with or discussing health issues with your physician or insurance companies and may prove valuable while traveling away from home should an incident requiring medical attention occur.
It may also be of benefit to record conditions that others in your immediate family have had or are experiencing so that your doctor may factor that information into your treatment and prognosis.
While this is the primary purpose of this screen, it can in fact be used for any other purpose that you require by changing the field names to suit your purpose.
Data Fields: There are several data fields available to you.
The data fields are contained on two lines on the screen. The fields are described from the first row left to right and then the second row.
1: The first is normally used to capture the general name of a condition or procedure, usually a generally recognized name that the condition or procedure is known as and referred to. You are limited to 50 characters for this field.
2: If important, you can record the technical or medical terminology for the condition or procedure. In some instances, there may be variations or stages of a condition so this may be of significant importance. You are limited to 255 characters for this field.
3: The third field can be used to record the attending physician, or person responsible for any treatment. You are limited to 72 characters for this field.
4: The fourth field can contain the approximate date of the condition onset, diagnosis, surgery, accident or whatever. A date calendar is presented when you double-click in the date field. Select the date you want by clicking on the day. The calendar will close and the date you selected will be entered for you. The ‘<<’ and ‘>>’ buttons on the calendar screen move the year forward and backward, while the ‘<’ and ‘>’ buttons move the month forward and backward.
5: Next, you may select from a list or enter a brief phrase to indicate the current status of the condition. You are limited to 255 characters for this field.
6: You can also enter any type of description that is appropriate for the condition: either symptoms; diagnoses; prognoses; or whatever you feel is appropriate information. There is no limit to the number of characters you can store in this field.
On the second line, you will find the following fields.
7: You can enter or select a brief phrase for use as a general category. When used with the standard report, this field will always be used at the top of a report page and will cause a page break to occur for each value change. This is useful and can be used to organize your data by category (dermatology, natal, disease, etc.) or by physician or medical center, or anything else that is appropriate. You are limited to 72 characters for this field.
8: The eighth data field is a hyperlink field that can be used to access a web-site relative to the condition, or to a document or folder where images, photos or other relevant material can be stored and referenced.
9: The ninth field is a data field where you can capture any current treatment or other relevant information, if you have not done so already in another data field. There is no limit to the number of characters you can store in this field.
10: The last data field is an attachment field that can be used to store images, photos, scanned documents or other objects that can be opened and viewed by a program on your computer. You may store as many objects as you require.
11: finally, there is a check box that you can set ‘On’ if for some reason you do not want a record to print on any report. It is used solely to control whether a record is included on a report or not, so it can be used even temporarily to cause a record not to appear in a report. It is not re-set automatically however. It will have to be reset should you want the record to appear on a subsequent report.
Note that the default names assigned to the above fields are just that: you can change the names of these fields to whatever names you want by using the Captions Control features accessed from 'personal' page of the main screen. Thus this screen can be used for other purposes if you wish.
Sorting, Searching and Filtering Records
You can sort the records so that they are presented in a desired sequence, search the records to find records that contain specific phrases, and/or filter the records so that only specific records are available.
Sorting: To sort the records, place your cursor in the field that you want to sort on, then right-click and choose the ascending or descending option from the context menu. You can sort on several fields repeating this action several times starting with the least significant field in your desired sort order.
Once a sort order has been established, it will remain in effect until it has changed. If you are unsure of the current sequence and if you wish to reset the sequence for any reason, click the 'Reset Sequence' button located near the top right of the screen. Clicking this button will alternately sequence the records from the first record entered into the database to the last record entered, or from the last to the first, depending on how they were last sorted using this reset feature.
When you open this screen the records will be in the same sequence as when the screen was last closed.
Searching: There are two ways to search for records that contain a specific phrase.
1: The first is to use the search box found at the bottom of the screen. When you enter a phrase in this box, your cursor will move to the first instance of the phrase that is found in any of your data fields. You can continue searching for the same phrase in other fields within the same record or in other records by pressing the 'Enter' key. Each time you press the 'Enter' key, the next instance of the phrase that is found is highlighted for you.
2: The second is to place your cursor in the field you want to search, then right-click and select 'Search (Find)'. If you selected text before right-clicking, the selected phrase will appear in the search box. If you did not select any text, the search box will be empty and you can enter any phrase you wish. You can also replace the text in the search box with any phrase you wish to search for.
The 'Find and Replace' window which opens will permit you to decide whether to search within the field you selected or all data fields; to specify whether you want to search any part of a field, the whole field or the start of the field; to specify whether you want to search all records or just those following or preceding the record you are in; and finally whether you want to specifically match on case (capital letters, etc.). Clicking the 'Find Next' button will initiate and continue the search.
Filtering: To filter the records so that only a subset of the records are available, place your cursor in the field you want to filter and select the phrase (the characters) you would like to filter on. Right click and select 'Filter By' or 'Filter Excluding'. The former will display all records that contain the selected phrase in the field you used to filter on. The latter will display all records that do not contain the selected phrase in the field you filtered.
When a filter has been applied, the term 'Filtered' will appear at the bottom of the screen to indicate that only a subset of your records are available. To reset the filter and display all of your records, right-click in the same field and select 'Filter (Reset all Records)', click on the 'Filtered' message at the bottom of the screen, or click the 'Reset Filter' button located near the top left of the screen.
Once you filter your data, the filter remains in place until you reset the filter.
When you open this screen for the first time during a session, all records are displayed. If you filter the records during your session and the filter is on when you close the screen, you will be given the opportunity to apply the same filter or to display all records when you open this screen again while in the same session (i.e. you have not closed and re-opened the application).
Note that filters can be nested. That is, you can filter the records, then filter the filtered records again any number of times to arrive at the precise set of records you wish to display.
Note also that if a displayed record does not contain the phrase you wish to filter on, you will have to perform a search operation first so that the record with the phrase you wish to filter on is displayed, permitting you to select the filter phrase.
In summary, remember that searching is not the same process as sorting or filtering. Searching is the process of locating one or more records that contain the search phrase. For example, you can highlight and find all the records containing the phrase 'disease'. Sorting is the process of organizing a set of records in a particular order. For example, you can sort a set of records in alphabetical order, by date or by quantity, and so on. Filtering is the process of displaying records that meet a given condition. For example, you can filter your conditions records to only include immunizations.
A status bar at the bottom of the screen indicates how many records are currently on display. When the records have been filtered, that box will show the number of filtered records available and the box next to it will say 'Filtered', or 'Unfiltered' as the case may be. A search box also permits you to search the currently available records for a phrase that you enter in this box.
Data Editing: Each record has a status box on its very left. When a record is empty and available for new data, that box contains an asterisk. When a record is being edited (changed) the box contains and right pointing arrow. When the box is black, it indicates that an entire record has been selected.
Editing: You change the contents of a data field as you do with any other computer program. You can double-click in most fields to open an edit box. This box shows multiple lines and the number of characters that are available to you for the field. Note that the two right-most data fields can be edited for style as well as for content.
Replacing: You may replace one, some or all instances of a specific phrase by using the 'Replace' function.
To replace a phrase, select it with your cursor, or place your cursor in the field that contains the data to be replaced, then right-click and select 'Search (Find)'. If you selected text before right-clicking, the selected phrase will appear in the search box. If you did not select any text, the search box will be empty and you can enter any phrase you wish. You can also replace the text in the search box with any phrase you wish to search for.
Click on the 'Replace' tab when the 'Find and Replace' window opens. A new box named 'Replace With:' is now available. Enter the phrase you wish to replace the 'Search (Find)' text with in the 'Find What:' box.
You then decide 1: whether you want to replace that value only when found in the same field or in any field by setting the 'Look In:' field; 2: whether you are replacing the whole field, any part of the field of just the start of the field; 3: the direction you want to move; and 4: whether you want to match on case.
When all settings are established and you are ready to continue, click either the 'Replace' or the 'Replace All' button. When you click the 'Replace' button, the current instance of the phrase will be replaced with the new phrase and the cursor will move to the next instance of the phrase that it finds. At this point you have the option to replace that instance or to proceed to the next instance. If you do not want to replace the found instance, click the 'Find Next' button to proceed to the next instance.
If you are certain that you want to change all instances in the currently selected set of records, you can click the 'Replace All' button. Clicking this button will change every instance of the phrase in the records that are currently available. All records are currently available if the records have not been filtered. If the records have been filtered, replacements will only occur within the filtered set of records.
You must exercise caution when using this feature as the only way the changes are recoverable is to reverse the procedure. It is sometimes preferable to filter your records to a specific subset of records that you wish the replacements to apply to so that you do not inadvertently make replacements in error.
Deleting: You delete a record by selecting (clicking) its 'Select' switch (found on the right side of the screen) and setting it to on, then clicking the 'Delete Selected' button. You can delete as many records as you wish by selecting more than one record for deletion. Note that once deleted, records cannot be retrieved..
Copying and Pasting: You copy and paste a record by selecting (clicking) its 'Select' switch (found on the right side of the screen) and setting it to on, then clicking the 'Copy Selected' button. You can copy as many records as you wish by selecting more than one record. Note that when you copy records, any data in the attachment field will not be copied. If you require the attachment data in the copied record, it will have to be re-entered manually.
Upon clicking the 'Copy' button, a sceen will open that permits you to copy the selected record(s) to the screen you are on, or to another user.
You can copy and paste data within specific fields from one record to another. Select the data you want to copy by highlighting it with your cursor, right-click and select 'Copy' from the context menu (or use the Ctl + C keys), then place your cursor in the place in the record and field you want to copy to, then right-click and select 'Paste' from the context menu (or use the Ctl + V keys) to place the copied data in the second field.
Tips and Hint(s):
If you would like to see how this data can be used, change to the ‘Sample’ user and view that data.
While the focus of the data fields is on medical conditions, do not overlook the fact that you can use the data fields to capture any type of related information that may be of assistance to a medical practitioner, such as allergies and intolerances (to food or medications), dietary requirements, physical characteristics (age, weight, height), and lifestyle issues (consumption of alcohol, smoking habits, diet, exercise, sleeping patterns and so on).
There is only one hyperlink available to you, but should you require additional linkages to other drug or disease related web-sites, you can always store their addresses in a description data field and then link from there or copy and paste the address into your web browser when you want to visit the site.
You can use the attachments data field to capture photos of your condition and then print the images you capture in this field.
You can delete a record by selecting it (clicking the box on the far left) and pressing the delete key or right-clicking and using the 'Cut' action option.
Note that it may be appropriate to maintain 2 or more lines of information about the same condition. For example, you may have one line to describe the condition itself, and another to describe a treatment, such as surgery, that was undertaken to resolve the condition. In such a case, the dates, attending physicians and information may differ considerably.
Note also that you are free to rename the fields used on this screen and to use the fields for whatever purpose suits your need. You do not have to follow the recommendations made above.
Printed Reports: Clicking the ‘Report’ button will open a report that you can print if you wish. The report is organized by categories with a new page for each, that then into sections as determined by the status field.
Reporting
This screen provides you with a reporting capability for your medical conditions records.
You initiate the reporting process by clicking the 'Print' button. This opens a screen that will permit you to set a number of customizing options for your report.
Report Filtering and Sorting
You specify which records you want and the sequence you want them in on your report by filtering and sorting the records on this screen. you must perform both of these operations prior to clicking the 'Print' button. In all cases, your report will adopt both the sequence and the filter status of the records on this screen.
Report Options
Clicking the 'Print' button presents a screen with a number of report options.
These options are explained in the following paragraphs.
1: You can group your records in up to 3 groups. You decide which data fields become the 1st, 2nd, or 3rd group. If no groups are selected, all records are printed in the same sequence as they appear on the data screen. This feature permits you to organize your data in a variety of ways. You may have to experiment to determine which set of groupings best serves your purpose.
2: You can print the groups contiguously on the report or start a new page for 1, 2 or all of the groupings by setting the 'New Page? option boxes on or off.
3: You can prevent data fields for the same record from spanning pages. This means that if all of a record is to start printing somewhere other than at the top of a page and its content cannot all be printed on the same page, it will start printing on the following page. This will result in blank space on some pages.
4: You can print your report in a slightly larger font by selecting a font size from the list box. You can choose from 3 additional font sizes for your report. Note that when larger font sizes are used, your report will span more pages and your field names and data will span more lines on your report.
5: You can choose to over-ride the standard report page headers with your own report header. You choose this option by selecting the 'Use on Report' option and entering what you would like as a report header in the 'Header text:' box. You can open an edit box by double clicking in the header text box and you can format the header text for style, color and format. The information you enter in this box will be saved and available the next time you open this screen. Note that you must use caution to ensure that your header lines fit in the space available at the top of each page. You may have to experiment with this feature to ensure a proper 'look' for your page headers.
6: You can choose to add a footnote to your report. The footnote will print at the end of the report. You choose this option by selecting the 'Use on Report' option and entering what you would like as a footnote in the 'Footnote text:' box. You can open an edit box by double clicking in the text box and you can format the data text for style, color and format. The information you enter in this box will also be saved and available the next time you open this screen. You may enter as much text as you like in this box and you may find it advantageous to enter and edit your footnote using word processing software and then copying and pasting it into this box.
When you have selected and established all of the options available to you, click the 'Preview' button to prepare the report. It is opened in preview mode so that you can ensure it is correct prior to printing.
Screens - Medical Conditions
