I work in a hospital and we have an informal patient database with records
that are completed over the course of the patient's hospital stay (e.g.
"hospital discharge date" will be null until the patient discharges). Right
now, this data is in Excel. People who have strong points other than data
entry are putting the data into this table, and most of the records are left
blank. When a patient discharges from the hospital, the record for the
patient is moved from the Active sheet (usually shows no more than 10
patients) to a Discharged sheet (many, many records of former patients).
We're trying to make the database better and we want to eliminate blank
fields. I need to create a form that will just show the active patients (and
there is a column that is only filled out once the patient is finished, so if
this field is null then the patient is still "Active"). I can't create a
table with every field required, because the data isn't filled out all at
once, but day-by-day.
I think I need to list every column as "Not required" and leave the "Allow
Zero Length" as Yes. If I create a query where I show any records that have
blank fields in certain columns, then create a form based off of that, I
should still be able to add new records while still showing the other
"Active" patients. And all the data will still be kept in a master table.
I'm going to try that and see if I can work out the bugs that pop up, too.
Thanks for your response. I guess I just had to ruminate on it for a while.
-Larissa
