Use cases

Typical use case

A patient has an eye problem. He/she will typically come in to Baragwanath casualty, from where they will be referred to the eye clinic. A St. John's doctor will then assess the patient, and determine if they need surgery. If they do, the patient will be entered into the system, together with some basic details about the operation required, and a grade, which determines how urgent the operation is.

The patient will then go home, and be told that the clinic will contact them with a date for a pre-op consultation.

The clinic staff will schedule surgeries several weeks in advance, based on how many surgeries the doctors will be able to perform on a given day. This will be done on a day by day basis. Firstly, the number of operations that will be possible to perform on that day will be defined. The system will then show a list of patients for each type of operation, together with contact details. The list is sorted according to priority, which is calculated according to grade, days waiting, etc. Clinic staff will phone patients, starting at the top of the list, to tentatively schedule a surgery for the given day.

Note that surgeries are not confirmed at this stage, and clinic staff will only tell the patients about the date of the pre-op consultation, which would typically be a week before the surgery date. Surgeries are confirmed after the pre-op. The list of surgeries scheduled for a day must therefore differentiate between provisional and confirmed surgeries.

The patient will then come for their pre-op. Based on the results of the pre-op, their surgery will be confirmed / details changed. They will be told their surgery date at the time of the pre-op.

After the surgery, a outcome-assessment appointment will be scheduled. This is when post-surgery data (for example post-op visual acuity) are determined.