Template talk:Infobox hospital/Archive 2

Archive 1

Archive 2

Archive 3

Archive 4

Upgraded

Template upgraded, with rewrite of explanation on use. Some minor tweaks (if hospital HealthCare and Type both left undefined, Unknown is shown on a compressed single line). Display changed from "Affiliation" to "Affliated Med.Sch." as some articles were using this to link to the name of a group of hospitals rather than Medical Schools (groups of hospitals should use the Org/Group parameter), also "Emerg.Dept." expanded a little in the extra spece provided to "Emergency Dept."

If there are any questions regarding the explanation of the template, or apparent errors in the coding, please ask :-) David Ruben ^Talk 05:27, 27 November 2006 (UTC)

Nicely done! --Arcadian 05:33, 27 November 2006 (UTC)

HealthCare parameter & Canadian Healthcare

I'm still trying to work out some specifics for some of the additional features I added to the template, see User_talk:Dhodges#Canadian_Healthcare. For the UK, I expect all public hospitals will point to the overall NHS rather than to NHS Scotland, NHS Wales, Health and Care NI. Likewise do you think it would be better, especially given that 8 out of the 10 locally named Provincal Medicare schemes are red-links, for all Canadian hospitals to point to just Medicare (Canada), rather than just a few being able to point to say Ontario Health Insurance Plan ? (If HealthCare='Medicare' it will point to the correct page for Australia/Canada/US). David Ruben ^Talk 09:27, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

I think it would for now. Is there any easy way to have it go to OHIP for Ontario, and a general term for all the ones that are red links? --ArmadilloFromHell 14:42, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

Yes possible - of course I presume not all hospitals in Ontario are part of Medicare (there must be some private hospitals), so yes if parameter set to Medicare then can get it to link. This is not too difficult for Canada with its 10 provinces and just 2 that have specific articles to link with. David Ruben ^Talk 15:24, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

Actually, there are no private for-profit hospitals in the Canadian system. There are a few private non-profits, such as the Shouldice Hernia Centre or those run by the Salvation Army, but all hospitals have to participate in medicare. -Dhodges 00:44, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

On a Canada-related note, could we change the country code that signifies a hospital is in Canada? Canadians don't generally recognize the two-letter country code CA as designating Canada (that abbreviation is usually assumed to mean California, perhaps they get to claim it because there are more people in California than in Canada.) Can we just change it to "Canada"? CaseInPoint 18:02, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

Not difficult/problem, just trying to abbreviate and keep location details brief, so Ok will switch.David Ruben ^Talk 18:27, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

Thanks! CaseInPoint 05:04, 2 December 2006 (UTC)

Affiliation parameter - to what should it apply ?

I know you did several calls for comment & I didn't but I've just noticed the affiliated link says "Afilliated med schools" but several seem to link to schools of nursing & allied health - is there any way we can take Med. out of the link?— Rod ^talk 16:58, 2 December 2006 (UTC)

Of course it can be, I'm not entirely sure it should be - the parameter seems to have been generally used for medical school links only until now, but yes hospitals & healthcare run as much on trained doctors as trained nurses. What does need to be clear, I think, is that this has been for training links, otherwise the parameter may get used for commercial affiliation (eg of a Pharmaceutical company having an association with the the hospital), but "Affiliated training" is too lengthy to fit on a single line. Yet does this addition to Frenchay Hospital suggest that any healthcare training (be it social workers, psychologists, dietitians etc etc) are to be linked, either using this parameter or by any other means in hospital articles? Hmmmm... what do other people think ? David Ruben ^Talk 02:47, 3 December 2006 (UTC)

We should definitely avoid the use of "medical" as it excludes non-medical health professions such as nursing. "University" would work well as a label; are there any objections to that? Waggers 12:29, 4 December 2006 (UTC)

Just need ensure end up with a phrase that both fits the limited space (single line preferable) and also meaningfulto those outside of the US. In UK we would talk about Medical Schools rather than University in medical training, and perhaps "attachment" rather than "Affiliation" (but we would understand this with the extra pointers of "Affiliated Med.Sch."). "Affiliated University" I suspect will not mean much to most British readers. So I've got no copmplaint re linking university training tie-ins, just not sure on best terminology & header to display for the template David Ruben ^Talk 20:05, 4 December 2006 (UTC)

Hmmm - given that most teaching hospitals in the UK belong to organisations named Mytown University Hospitals NHS Trust, I would have thought that "Affiliated university" would make sense in that context. After all, most (if not all) UK medical schools are part of a university, usually containing schools of nursing and allied health professionals too. It's important that we move away from the exclusive "medical" term. We could use "HEI" (higher education institution) which is well understood in the UK, but this may make the template too UK-centric as I'm not sure if this term is used elsewhere. "Education provider" may be too long. Waggers 20:52, 4 December 2006 (UTC)

Yuck - no general British reader will know what "HEI" means, horrible term :-( You are of course correct as to what the UK teaching hospitals are tending to call themselves (i.e. University Hospitals), but the general public and most doctors would refer to them as "Teaching hospitals", but this is to digress :-) Unless someone comes up with something inspired, "Affiliated university" is definitely best of options so far, and only expands width of the template by about 1.5 characters. Would be nice to have now some comments from other editors before we implement this. David Ruben ^Talk 22:55, 4 December 2006 (UTC)

I agree, we need some wider concensus. Just to note though that "uni" is a very widely understood abbreviation for "university" if space is the issue. Waggers 10:32, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

Thanks all, as the one who started this I agree we need to avoid medicine & place similar value on the training of nurses, allied health professionals etc. I think "Affiliated University" is a good option - but some of our local hospitals eg the Frenchay Hospital example used earlier, have medical students from one university & nursing & allied health from another - so is there any way to cope with plurals for the Uni?— Rod ^talk 11:46, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

It's not just medical schools that are affiliated to hospitals - nursing, physiotherapy etc are all degree courses in the UK too. I say change this to University Affiliation or something similar - without the full stops which make the template look poor. I also think the text size should be reduced similar to other templates such as Template:Infobox University. rying to fit all countries' health systems into one template may be too much! PMJ 22:56, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

(indent reset) Ok this point been open for a month now and time to make some conclusions and enact. So, to rephrase to allow other than just medical association, and term "Affiliated University" seems have the widest support with just single comment eitherway re abbreviating "University" to "Uni.". Let me know what you think seeing this change live in article space :-) David Ruben ^Talk 01:24, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

Good job, much better in my opinion. Waggers 18:57, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

Website coding

My thanks go to Alfakim (see User_talk:Alfakim#Templates and parameter for external link, problem with "=" in URL). In case anyone wonders what the problem was, the {{{Website}}} parameter worked well for normal URL addresses. However no value was effectively passed if the URL address contained an "=" as part of a query to show a specific page within a website (eg http://www.cht.nhs.uk/index.php?id=53). The "=" of the parameter value would be interpreted as an assignment operation within the template coding, this all resulted in {{{Website}}} failling to return any value and a blank field would be shown. See Alfakim's re-coding that has sorted out this problem - again many thanks. David Ruben ^Talk 03:45, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

Speciality default

Currently the Speciality parameter is described as "Used where the hospital is primarily devoted to a particular medical or surgical speciality (i.e. not if it has a broad spectrum of specialities and one happens to be more famous than the rest)". But if there is no speciality of special notability (i.e. it has the usual range of fields of medicine/surgey that any general hospital might be expected to have), then this parameter being undefines displays "unknown". This seems incorrect as it is not "unknown" whether the hospital is primarily devoted to particular specialities - but rather it is known that this is not the case.

Also see this edit to Addenbrooke's Hospital, where an editor specified that the hospital provides a range of services, whilst this is true, it is not what this parameter was originally intended for.

Options are:

• Change of default display to "None" or "None of special notability" - but failure to define the parameter may indeed be due to an editor not having been able to find out whether there is or is not a primary devotion to particular specialities.
• Add in the template guide to be copied & pasted into articles a < ! - - ... - - > message explaininmg that the parameter is not to list out the range of specialities provided by teh hospital but only indicate if teh hospital is devoted to a single speciality or has a speciality of national notability (leaving unmentioned that the hospital may have other non-notable routine services). However this does not alter editors coming to hospital articles already containing this template as to this use of "speciality" as a parameter.

My preference is to have default display as "None of special notability" as this will indicate to editors coming to existing articles using the template that this parameter is not to be used to insert lists of routine speciality services provided by most General Hospitals. This I have implemented, but comments welcome :-) David Ruben ^Talk 02:46, 31 December 2006 (UTC)

An alternative default display might be a more positive phrased "General range of services" or something similar.David Ruben ^Talk 02:52, 31 December 2006 (UTC)

My preference would be to omit the field altogether from articles on general hospitals, so that it's only displayed for specialist hospitals. Waggers 20:47, 31 December 2006 (UTC)

Yes a reasonable option - anyone else care comment before I so recode ? David Ruben ^Talk 03:17, 1 January 2007 (UTC)

I agree with Waggers. Your second option is better. The default should be blank, not unknown. Cmcnicoll 19:30, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

Tertiary services ?

Doest this mean that Cardiothoracic surgery and Neurosurgery should be included in Specialty if the hospital is a tertiary referral centre? PMJ 22:58, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

Hmmm, yes an important distinction that the current Infobox directions perhaps fails to adequately cover. As it currently stands, the guidance would seem to imply that a hospital providing the normal range of general hospital services plus perhaps a regional or tertiary super-speciality should not so use the Speciality parameter - the hospital is a "General Hospital that happens to have some specific notable sub-specialities" within it, rather than that the hospital as a whole is a "Specialist Hospital that fails to provide a broad range of services".

• Additional point in favour of this strict definition is that many UK general hospitals would perform emergency Cardiothoracic or even Neurosurgery surgery onsite if required, even though routine operations might be concentrated at just one District General Hospital in a region.
• Against this strict interpretation might be a General Hospital which has within its grounds a secure psychiatric inpatient unit - clearly not something provided in the UK by other District General Hospitals, and which would therefore be a notable fact about the services provided by the hospital in question.

This is an issue with fine distinctions and unless a clear and firm consensus can be reached, risks inconsistency on how this parameter and the Infobox is used across large numbers of articles.

Would we be better to maintain "Speciality parameter" purely for use if the hospital is a Speciality hospital (i.e. not providing general range of services) and, following Waggers' suggestion be entirely hidden for hospitals not having "Type parameter" set as "speciality". Instead should we offer a new parameter shown only for other "Type parameter" settings (i.e."general" or "teaching") for areas of particular notability. Care would be needed with accompanying guidance, else supporters for each hospital might try and claim almost every field of healthcare as excelling. I think, as you suggest, this would need to be restricted to tertiary referral or regional services e.g. regional Cardiothoracic, Neurosurgery, renal dialysis etc and specifically not for services typically found in most District General hospitals.

Such a parameter might be named "Tertiary services", but might be of clearer purpose if named "Additional services", "Regional&Tertiary services", "Super-specialities" or "General with tertiary". My tuppence preference is for "Regional&Tertiary services", further thoughts anyone  ? David Ruben ^Talk 01:55, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

Additional information

Is it possible to add "Motto" to the infobox for hospitals? How should mottos be dealt with? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Jonnny7 (talk • contribs) 13:27, 26 January 2007 (UTC).

• I agree. I know of hospitals in US that have mottos. Cmcnicoll 19:16, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

hCard Microformat

I would like us to add the hCard microformat (see also Wikipedia:WikiProject_Microformats) to this template. I can advise on the required mark-up, but I'm not familiar with template code editing. Andy Mabbett 12:24, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

Whilst I can help with template writing, I'm afraid I'm clueless as to what hcard mark-up actual entails (and the Wikipedia:WikiProject_Microformats is just plain confusing listing just possible templates for inclusion, but giving no details as to what the proposed additional markup would be.) Has such fundamental linkage/machine readable data proposal been mentioned and agreed widely (eg at WP:Village pump, Wikipedia:WikiProject Templates or m:Help:HTML_in_wikitext?) I understood that use of div tags was generally to be avoided to help ensure compatibility and easy reading of the wikitext in different browsers (see also Span and div#Possible overuse), but perhaps I have misunderstood ? David Ruben ^Talk 02:19, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

(outdent) Taking your points one by one:

• "Wikipedia:WikiProject_Microformats is just plain confusing [...] giving no details as to what the proposed additional markup would be" - I haven't listed the mark-up, because it's described on the externally-linked spec, on the microformats wiki (and on the cheatsheets on that site, particularly); and on the hCard article on Wikipedia
• "Has such fundamental linkage/machine readable data proposal been mentioned and agreed widely (eg at WP:Village pump, Wikipedia:WikiProject Templates or m:Help:HTML_in_wikitext?)'" - it's at the former, but I wasn't aware of the other two; I'll do so now.
• "I understood that use of div tags was generally to be avoided" - microformats can be applied to any element, DIV is generally simply used for illustration.

Thanks, Andy Mabbett 09:01, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

Spelling

Shall I put on a parameter for organisation/organization, so the Australian, Kiwi, South African, British, Irish and/or Candian Organisations can use -s- and American and/or Canadian Organizations can use -z-? Bennelliott • Talk • Contributions 19:50, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

No. Firstly I do not think required under wikipedia's general rule of not altering between various versions of English - and as this template's major upgrade was set up under British English, so it should remain :-) Secondly there would be no need anyway for any additional parameter - the template already provides for the 'Country' parameter (and the necessary coding is easy from this if consensus were for this feature). David Ruben ^Talk 01:56, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

If it was originally set up as BrE, then why is it spelt with a z? Surely thats En-OED?

I would say yes to the original question. (I also think it should say "NHS trust" instead of organisation/organization (ugh)) for NHS hospitals, and also list the SHA they belong to.) The more dynamic we make the template the better. At the moment, I shudder every time I see it on a UK hospital article because of the incorrect spelling (and the inconsistencies that causes within any such article). With templates we should consider the articles they're going to be in rather than the history of the template itself - but in any case as the unsigned post says, if the major upgrade was under Commonwealth English as David says it was, then it should be "organisation" not "organization". Waggers 14:58, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

"If it was originally set up as BrE, then why is it spelt with a z? Surely thats En-OED?" Yeah, it doesn't look very good on Commonwealth pages, like Dorset County Hospital for example, and it would be more consistent with the manual of style for each article, and it's only a very simple bit of syntax - I'd be glad to do it. Bennelliott • Talk • Contributions 16:37, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

Ok folks :-) I'll code it for relevant organisation/organization version of English. re Waggers query, re "NHS Trust" instead of organisation/organization, no I think it should remain as organisation/organization:

• This section is not just about which Organisation the hospital belongs to, but rather is about the organisational structures the hospital operates under (i.e. organisation with a lowercase "o" if you get my meaning, except of couse capitalised as start of sentance).
• So the details provided will, for UK NHS hospitals, already have displayed "NHS Trust" in the previously displayed 'Org/Group' defined parameter.
• And the 'HealthCare' parameter will then be defining the hospital as being part of the NHS (term wikilinked).
• Also the section gives details on hospital university affiliation, but the affiliation is not with the NHS Trust as a whole (some hospitals in an NHS trust might not have any medical students present, whilst others may be teaching hospitals)
• Finally it can not be set by simple programing on basis of country alone, as not all UK hospitals are part of NHS trusts (i.e we do have some private hospitals too, in which case teh organisation details are that the 'Healthcare'=Private).David Ruben ^Talk 17:31, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

Forgot, also the hospital type (DGH or specialist tertiary centre) applies to the specific hospital, not to the whole NHS Trust which might have several different hospitals in its group. David Ruben ^Talk 17:41, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

Good man! :D Bennelliott • Talk • Contributions 17:22, 31 March 2007 (UTC)

Bug

Can anyone see what was wrong with this edit, which broke the template? (I've reverted, but left my changes in the documentation, in the hope that this can be remedied quickly) Andy Mabbett 14:01, 12 May 2007 (UTC)

The closing span tag split the closing curly brackets. See this correction. Now that it works, can you explain what the "infobox vcard" does compared to the previous "infobox" alone and enlighten me as to what the span class="fn org" is for ? David Ruben ^Talk 16:45, 12 May 2007 (UTC)

Ah just seen the changes at bottom of /doc... still don't quite get of of that... will ponder further ... David Ruben ^Talk 16:49, 12 May 2007 (UTC)

Can you explain what the various "adr" "county-name" "fn" "label" "locality" "nickname" "note" "org" "vcard" are for, how they are used etc - Wikipedia:WikiProject Microformats and Microformat really give no clear description of this or explanation of how to use. Indeed does this wikiproject aim's have the support of the wider community and Meta-Wiki? David Ruben ^Talk 16:57, 12 May 2007 (UTC)

Thank you for the fix. "vcard" is the parent class of hCard; I think you'll find what you're looking for on that page. There are already tens-, if not hundreds-, of thousands of Microformat on Wikipedia. Andy Mabbett 18:37, 12 May 2007 (UTC)

Would anyone object to having the coordinates display in the infobox when entered as "latitude" & "longitude", as they currently do if entered as "coordinates"? Andy Mabbett 10:44, 21 May 2007 (UTC)

Yes - not for having co-ord details, but for having two separate systems "map_type"/"longitude"/"lattitude" as well as "Coordinates" which uses a template - suggest keep to just one system. Actually displaying the coordinates themselves is not I think notable.David Ruben ^Talk 14:07, 21 May 2007 (UTC)

The reason for this request was to enable a local map to be displayed in the infobox see examples at Frenchay Hospital, Southmead Hospital & Bristol Royal Infirmary. Similar location maps which are driven by lat & long are (I believe) in preparation for all of UK.— Rod ^talk 14:12, 21 May 2007 (UTC)

I'm sorry, David, but I can't make out what you objections are. Can you clarify, please? Andy Mabbett 14:25, 21 May 2007 (UTC)

Oooh - thats clever, and looks nice. My objection here is that there are 2 separate systems in use (the other using the "Coordinates" parameter) and really only one should be used (to be honest I have not seen an example of coordinates parameter that seemed to work). I wonder if the "coordinates" markup really needs its parameter (and instead get driven by these parameters) ? David Ruben ^Talk 21:52, 21 May 2007 (UTC)

The Template:coord system seems much more developped & well structured (in that gives a whole range of mapping options) and also is automated (in as much as maps of each region do not need to be first individually uploaded into wikipedia). Given that both take long/lat values, it should be possible to merge in this infobox the 2 systems ? Thoughts ? David Ruben ^Talk 22:01, 21 May 2007 (UTC)

Location Place

This is my first time seeing this template. What is the difference between "location" and "place" or is it supposed to be one word? Why is one field empty? or is "location" a header? I find it very confusing and not as intuitive as other templates. Does anyone else seeing it the first time get confused? --Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) 05:11, 6 June 2007 (UTC)

Partly this was to preserve compatability with previous US-centric and UK-centric versions of the infobox, and in part to provide widest possible flexibility, yet allow for the clever coding the infobox does to help wikilink on terms, the country and auto-generate links to List of hospital in.... There is no Place parameter. The infobox takes Country, State and Region which are all wikilinked. The lesser qualification of Location is an optional parameter that often is not required, but also it provides a free text option.

This flexibility for Location to manually code and link to what might otherwise have been in the Region city/area parameter is particularly useful perhaps for US cities which often have article names of the form City (State). However the template still needs the State parameter defining to autogenerate the correct 'List of hospitals in <State>' link. In such as case, Region is not used and Location is given alternative text to display, e.g. Location = [[City (state)|City]]

Hence :

Birmingham Children's Hospital
Geography
Location	Birmingham, England, United Kingdom
Links
Lists	Hospitals in England

{{Infobox Hospital
| Name        = Birmingham Children's Hospital
| Location    = 
| Region      = Birmingham
| State       = England
| Country     = UK
}}

Whereas

St Thomas' Hospital
Geography
Location	Lambeth, London, England, United Kingdom
Links
Lists	Hospitals in England

{{Infobox Hospital
| Name        = St Thomas' Hospital
| Location   = [[Lambeth]]
| Region     = London
| State      = England
| Country    = UK
}}

And as example more complex coding, and note that the city name, as per first example is also "Birmingham" (but in a different country):

UAB Hospital
Geography
Location	Birmingham, Alabama, United States
Links
Lists	Hospitals in Alabama

{{Infobox Hospital
| Name        = UAB Hospital
| Location    = [[Birmingham, Alabama|Birmingham]]
| Region      = <!-- e.g. County or City -->
| State       = Alabama
| Country     = US
}}

David Ruben ^Talk 12:22, 6 June 2007 (UTC)

questions about template

Is it possible to have the template display nothing if the Wiki-Links field is not filled in? That is, rather than displaying See also with no value, can it be rigged to not show See also at all if there's no value? The "See also" information seems out of place in an infobox about a specific hospital, and usually it goes at the end of the article anyway.

Also, the template documentation seems to indicate that Organization is displayed if Country is set to USA; in actuality, it must be set as US. Esrever 06:41, 3 July 2007 (UTC)

As far as I am aware, for most english speaking countries (and this is English Wikipedia), the auto-generated "List of hospitals in..." will always give a valid wikipage - where were you thinking this should not be displayed. The list provision was an attempt to standardise the link which was variably included or not in hospital articles and with insonsistant markup or display. Similarly, for the UK, providing a link to the NHS, prevented this appearing somewhat inappriopriately in external links or see-also lists etc.

Yes, you are correct, the country code needs be set as the 2 country ISO code of "US" for United States Of America. David Ruben ^Talk 12:32, 3 July 2007 (UTC)

Actually why display the list at all? A correctly set up hospital is already in a category which already includes an appropriate list if it exists. Also the code defaults to the US list when state a specific list exists. That's reason enough to remove it. To include state and country specific code in the template is a disaster in my opinion. Vegaswikian 08:21, 14 October 2007 (UTC)