What happens when a Practitioner becomes a Patient?
A doctor or a nurse can — and often is — treated in their own hospital.
This is where FHIR’s Person resource shows up.
Individual people in FHIR can be a Patient, a Practitioner or a RelatedPerson. Each plays a different role in the medical setting.
Dr Poe works as a cardiologist at the local hospital. He was rushed in for an appendectomy many years ago. On more than one occasion he was ‘next of kin’ to one or other of his family members as they underwent treatment.
He was a Patient. He is a Practitioner. And he’s a frequent RelatedPerson.
In FHIR that’s represented as a single Person resource with links to a Patient resource, a Practitioner resource and multiple instances of RelatedPerson resources.
Person resources never appear in FHIR as the subject or the performer.
You can’t perform a procedure on a Person. You can’t diagnose a Person with a condition or prescribe them medication via a MedicationRequest.
But where they exist, you can use them to connect different Patient, Practitioner and RelatedPerson resources.
Learn more about the Person resource: http://hl7.org/fhir/R4/person.html
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