CHAPTER ONE
1.0 INTRODUCTION
A clinic is an institution with an organized medical and nursing
staff, provide a range of medical service, like surgery, for people
requiring intensive treatment or observation.
It may also include facilities for childbirth as well as various out-patient departments.
A clinic is not make up of various departments where various cases and handled. For example
- The surgery department where patients are operated on in the theaters.
- Obstetrics and gynecology unit where pregnant women are taken care of.
- Pediatric department where you treat children.
An outpatient is a patient who does not reside in the clinic where
he/she is being treated. The registers of the outpatients are used for
documentation of the outpatients. The documentation of the outpatients.
The data for outpatient registers are registration number, name of
patient, age, sex, registration address etc.
The outpatient unit is made up of casually section, records, outpatient, theaters, various clinics etc.
The treatment of the outpatients ends in the outpatient department which that of the inpatients ends in their various wards.
1.1 STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM
It could be very burdensome for someone who is seriously ill. It
wounded or weak to queue on clinic line waiting for the doctor to attend
to him or to pay for service and also get drugs.
But when the designing and implementation of a computerize outpatient
information system is achieved, a lot of problems will be documented
for the outpatient. These problems includes:
- Time wastage
- Absence of doctors involved
- File sorting
1.2 PURPOSE OF THE STUDY
Hospital organization today is a essential part of the medical care
scheme, owing to the increasing complexity of medical problem. It is
very necessary that medical practitioners and specialists have an up to
data and automated services.
This study will examine the problem arising from manual operations of
the outpatient information system and how these can be conquered by
introducing the computer. This research work also aims at designing a
statement that can replace the manual operations of the outpatient
information system
1.3 SIGNIFICANCE OF THE STUDY
The significance of this study is that it eliminates:-
(i) Time Wastage:- When this study is practiced the
time an outpatient wastes in registering seeing the doctor, buying drugs
will be eliminated. Because it will no longer be handled manually
rather it is going to be computer based.
(ii) It also eliminates inconveniency:- In a situation
whereby a patient registered in the clinic for the past three and later
came back in the fourth year for the check up, the information of that
out-patient can be accessed convenient using the computer, rather than
searching for the outpatient information or records manually
1.4 SCOPE OF THE STUDY
The scope of this study is limited to the design and implementation
of a computerize outpatient information system for the Hansa clinics
Enugu.
1.5 ASSUMPTIONS
It is assumed that all the data located are true valid. It is also
assumed that the basic requirements of the outpatient information system
should not be changed often so that the program will score for a very
long time.
1.6 DEFINITION OF TERMS
Diagnosis:- It means a determination of an individuals disease, illness, or injury, made by a health care provider.
Patient: A person who is receiving medical care form a doctor.
Outpatient: A patient who is not an inpatient (not hospitalized), but
instead comes to a doctor’s office, clinic or day surgery for
treatment.
Inpatient: A patient living in the hospital where he is being treated
File: A collection of related records or a folder that is based keep documents
Prescription: A written instructions from a physician to a pharmacist
stating the form, closage, strength, etc, of a drug to be issued to a
specific patient.
Data: These are raw facts, but when captured or processed, generates information
Program: A sequence of coded instruction fed into a computer,
enabling it to perform specified logical and arithmetical operations on
data.