Glossary

Advanced admission/admittance notification

the notification generated for future patients two weeks in advance of their projected admission date

Attribute

A single piece of information in a data record. For example, name is an attribute of a patient record.

Capital Resources

This is the economist`s definition of capital. This is defined to be any man made resource which aid production; production in this case being the medical care of various patients. Capital resources would include such things as operating theater facilities, office equipment, ward facilities, admitting facilities and such.

Database

a collection of data, related and indexed for easy manipulation and retrieval

Doctor

A certified MD.

Flag

A notice to the user of some error condition. This is merely a notification that something is wrong. Think of it as a warning flag going up.

Nurse

A certified RN or BSc Nursing. Can be either a regular nurse or a supervising nurse.

HMS

Hospital Management System (the name of the proposed software system)

Hospital Number

This refers to the patients medical/hospital insurance number (eg. Alberta Health Care number). This number can be used to uniquely identify an individual.

Human Resources

Simply put, this is the hospital's staff.

ICU

intensive care unit

Module

A block of the software system that performs a set of related functions. The software system is in fact made up of various modules that farm out the different tasks.

Operating Room

Also called an operating theater. This is the room where the surgical team performs various operations on unwitting patients.

Recovery Room

A special area for patients who have just had surgery. Special monitoring staff ensure that patients come out of anesthetic without any problems. A recovery facility is necessary to ensure that patients do not develop anesthesia narcosis.

Room

Place where a patient is assigned for the duration of their stay in the hospital. A room contains one bed.

Software System

A collection of programs that perform a related set of functions. The HMS is/will be a software system.

Staff Number

A unique number [assigned by the system] to a particular staff member. This number can be used to uniquely identify a staff member.

Syntactically Incorrect Inputs

This condition occurs when the user attempts to enter say a phone number where a name was expected.

Towel

No self respecting galactic hitch-hiker should be without one.

User

The individual who will actually use the software system. For example, it can be said that when you drive a car, you are the user of that car.

User Interface

This is what the users deal with when they use the system. The interface dictates the way in which the user interacts with the software system.

Ward

Refers to a particular floor of the hospital that provides a specific care-giving function (eg. emergency, cardiac, ICU, etc.)

Last Modified Mar. 5, 1996 by

Darrell Nash