Hi all,
Generally speaking, without looking at a very specific form, what determines the way program stages should be configured in a tracker? This question really haunts me and i am looking forward to a responde from the community.
Thanks
That’s an interesting question! Thanks!
In terms of configuration, I think it is different from program to program and the usecase.
I think program stages are ordered depending on sharing settings as well as timeline vs tabular. The tabular (static) which orders them in order of date whereas the timeline in order of latest event in a program stage.
Hi, do you mean how do you decide what constitutes a stage? Or what order to set them up in? For me, I generally think from the perspective of the tracked entity (person). What discrete encounters are they having over time with the project or health facility? Then I ask:
- do we need to know the exact date of each encounter?
- will data collectors enter data into DHIS2 after each encounter?
That helps determine if any of the encounters should be combined into one stage - if we don’t need to know the exact date and the data won’t be entered until after multiple encounters anyway, sometimes it can be simplified that way. Most projects I work on, the stages happen in more or less the same chronological order, so I configure them that way.
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Hi @Natalie_Tibbels,
From my post I mean what constitutes a stage. Points 1 and 2 in your explanation are good hints and will certainly help me at the time of creating stages for tracker programs.
One question:
For situations in which you have to capture the exact date each encounter occurred, do you use the default report date/event date or do you create a date data element?
Thanks
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Definitely use the default date, but you can rename it in the stage configuration. For example it will default I think to “report date” but you can rename it so it shows up for the user “Date of visit” or “Date of session” or whatever the encounter is. But I have found analysis to be easier when you use the default date of the stage for the most important date you want to track (the date of the session or the health facility visit or whatever).
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Hi @Natalie_Tibbels,
Thank you so much.
Ona last question
I have read about the use of either incident or enrollment dates for scheduling events automatically. Can you share your experience in the definition of schedules?
Sorry if I am asking a lot of questions.
Thanks
No problem! Enrollment date should typically be the date you add the person to the program/start tracking them. We use it as the date of recruitment/registration (for multi-session educational groups) and others use it as the date they come to the clinic to fill out new patient paperwork, for example. The program stage has an event date that documents the actual date of the encounter. Program stages can also, optionally, have a “due date” (which I usually hide unless I am wanting to schedule reminders). Due dates are how you would automatically schedule events.
Incident date has always been a bit confusing for me, not working in clinical settings, but it has to do with a date you know at the time of enrollment that you want to use to calculate subsequent stages. Like if you enrolled a person Monday, but you know their last vaccine dose was Saturday, and you want to schedule their next vaccine dose from Saturday rather than Monday (or something). I usually turn off the incident date in program configuration because it’s not really relevant to the type of work we do. See this post for a better explanation: