I am trying to develop a database that will help me track patients who are waiting for, then have, an organ transplant. I am just in the beginning stages of planning it out but have a question about 2 different things.
1. I would like to follow various lab tests at specific intervals. For example, 12 hours after surgery, 24 hours after, 7 days after, etc. Would I have a different table for each lab test then a row for each patient and a field for each time interval?
2. I am also tracking several things related to the actual surgery. Examples are whether the patient had a blood transfusion or not during surgery, and if so, how many; who the anesthesiologist was, and how long the surgery lasted. Would I have a different table for each surgery with a row for each patient and a field for each thing I would like to track?

I am not using any patient identifiers (name, SSN, etc) but rather giving them a name based on their appearance in our program. So, the first patient we see is simply named "One", the second "Two" and so on. The point is not to relate this to any specific patient but to see how other things may relate to each other. An example of this would be looking to see whether length of surgery makes any difference in their length of stay.

I have read many of the informational articles, files and websites over and over but can't seem to work this out in my head. I would love to take a class in Access but haven't looked into that yet. Any suggestions on where to go for that? I was thinking my local community college would be a choice.

Thanks in advance, hope this makes sense!

This post has been edited by GroverParkGeorge: Mar 31 2012, 08:26 PM