Path
Patient.gender
Id
Patient.gender
Type
Cardinality
0 - 1
Definition
Administrative Gender - the gender that the patient is considered to have for administration and record keeping purposes.
Comment
The gender may not match the biological sex as determined by genetics, or the individual's preferred identification. Note that for both humans and particularly animals, there are other legitimate possibilities than M and F, though the vast majority of systems and contexts only support M and F. Systems providing decision support or enforcing business rules should ideally do this on the basis of Observations dealing with the specific gender aspect of interest (anatomical, chromosonal, social, etc.) However, because these observations are infrequently recorded, defaulting to the administrative gender is common practice. Where such defaulting occurs, rule enforcement should allow for the variation between administrative and biological, chromosonal and other gender aspects. For example, an alert about a hysterectomy on a male should be handled as a warning or overrideable error, not a "hard" error.
Requirements
Needed for identification of the individual, in combination with (at least) name and birth date. Gender of individual drives many clinical processes.
Binding
required
The gender of a person used for administrative purposes.