I need some general advice on designing the cosmetics of an input form.

A patient comes in and the triage nurse has to click on the "symptoms" that the patient complains of. I have a list of about 30 "primary symptoms" that need to be in the list. This can cause an enormous amount of clutter on the screen. The 30 symptoms can be grouped together and displayed on different tabs ... but that is not the best option, as it will cause the triage nurse to be biased. Rather, the 30 symptoms should all be "equal" and available in one glance.

Some of the primary symptoms need secondary questioning, e.g. if the patient complains of "cough", the nurse has to ask "dry cough?" or "producing phlegm?" ... so, selecting "cough" as a primary symptom, a secondary option must become visible to prompt for the secondary questioning.

What is the best way to design this screen?
- radio style option buttons?
- command button style buttons?
- any other ideas?

Thanks

J

The way I would do this is with a multi-select listbox. The triage nurse would then select the applicable symptoms which would then be written to a related table with one record for each symptom. I would thne open a subform where the nurse can expand on each sympton with additional info.

Jab,

you come up with some good ones!

You could have a combobox with the 30 main symptoms, and have it open additional sub-forms as it gets 'deeper' into the symptoms/cause.

My 2 1/2 cents worth anyway

good luck,

Aqua