Practitioner Register Consultant - hmislk/hmis GitHub Wiki

Practitioner — Register a Consultant

A consultant in HMIS is a doctor who runs scheduled channelling sessions. This is the record type that appears in channel booking screens, session schedules, doctor cards, and channelling payment screens. If you register a person here, they will be available for booking in the channelling module. If you register them as a plain doctor instead, they will not appear in channelling.

A Consultant is technically a more specialised version of Doctor, which is itself a more specialised version of Staff. All three share one underlying row in the database but expose different working screens. This article covers the consultant screen specifically.

Navigation

Top menu → Administration → Manage Staff → Consultant.

Path: /admin/staff/admin_doctor_consultant.xhtml.

Privilege required: AdminStaff.

Layout of the screen

The screen is two columns. The left column lists every consultant in the system, with a filter at the top. The right column shows a tabbed details panel for whichever consultant is selected, or a blank form after you click Add.

Toolbar buttons:

Button Effect
Add (green) Clears the right-side form so you can create a new consultant.
Delete (red) Soft-deletes (retires) the selected consultant. Confirmation dialog appears.
Excel (green) Downloads the current consultant list to an .xlsx file.

The details panel has two tabs:

  • Basic Details — the editable fields.
  • Edit — read-only audit fields (ID, who created the record, when).

Adding a new consultant

  1. Click Add. The Basic Details tab clears.
  2. Fill the fields described in the table below.
  3. Click Save. The new consultant appears in the listbox.

Field reference (Basic Details tab)

Field What to enter Notes
Title Pick from the dropdown filtered to doctor titles only (Dr., Prof., etc.). The dropdown is narrower than the one on the generic Staff screen — only doctor-appropriate titles are listed.
Name Display name (e.g., A. B. Perera). Required. Stored on Person.
Code Short internal code. Optional. If purely numeric, the integer is also captured.
Consultant Serial No Numeric serial used to order consultants and to drive booking numbering. Required by convention (marked with an asterisk in the UI). Set a positive integer; the system uses this to sort the consultant in some channel lists.
Phone Office or hospital phone. Optional.
Fax Fax number. Optional.
Mobile Mobile number. Optional but recommended; used for SMS notifications.
Address Free-text postal address. Optional.
Speciality Doctor Speciality for channelling (Cardiology, Paediatrics, etc.). Pick from the Doctor Specialities catalog (channelling-side), not the All Specialities catalog. See Admin — Doctor Specialities Catalog.
Institution Primary institution. Optional but recommended. Filters the Department list below. To make the consultant bookable at a specific branch, add a separate Institution link via Setup → Add Channelling Consultants to Institutions.
Department Department within the selected institution. Optional.
Registration Regulatory ID (SLMC number, etc.). Optional. Free text; no expiry check.
Qualification Full qualification line for printed materials. Optional. Free text.

The Consultant screen uses the Doctor Specialities catalog (not All Specialities). If the speciality you need is missing, ask an administrator to add it under Metadata → Doctor Specialities.

Field reference (Edit tab — read-only)

Field What it shows
ID The internal database identifier of the record. Useful for troubleshooting.
Creator The user who first created the consultant record (name with title).
Created At The timestamp the record was created (Asia/Colombo).

Editing an existing consultant

  1. Select the consultant in the listbox.
  2. Edit any value in the Basic Details tab.
  3. Click Save. The list refreshes.

Edits propagate immediately. Historical bookings continue to reference the same underlying record, so the name/qualification change shows on those bookings too.

Deleting (retiring) a consultant

  1. Select the consultant.
  2. Click Delete and confirm.

The record is soft-deleted (retired = true); it disappears from the consultant list and from the channelling booking dropdowns. Past sessions and bookings continue to display the name correctly. If you need to bring the consultant back later, an administrator can clear the retired flag in the database. See Practitioner — Deactivate and Bulk Delete.

Making the consultant bookable

Just registering the consultant here is not enough to make them appear in the channel booking screen for every branch. Two further steps are normally required:

  1. Link the consultant to one or more institutions (branches) so the booking screen knows where they can be booked. Use Setup → Add Channelling Consultants to Institutions. See Practitioner — Link to Institution for Channelling.
  2. Create one or more channel sessions for the consultant (the times they are available). This is done from the channelling module, not from the Manage Staff screen. See Channel — Managing Consultants and Specialities and the channel scheduling articles.

Until both steps are done, the new consultant will not appear in booking dropdowns at the booking counter.

Exporting the consultant list

The Excel button downloads the current consultant list to a spreadsheet (similar to the doctor export described in Practitioner — Register a Doctor).

Limitations

  • A consultant has one speciality. There is no separate list of "additional specialities" or "subspecialties" on the consultant record. If you need to record multiple disciplines, use the Qualification field as free text.
  • There is no expiry, renewal reminder, or formal credentialing approval for the Registration field.
  • There is no "Active / Inactive" toggle on this screen. The only way to disable a consultant is to retire (delete) the record.

Related articles

Back to Practitioner Module Overview