Able to overwrite existing appointments of a patient with a new appointment of another patient and doctor

[Sebtey]

Command : edit_a 6 pic\S1890251D dic\T0157283A from\2023-12-12 08:00 to\2023-12-12 12:00

Originally:

After:

Good job in addressing invalid datetime. However I spotted this issue of edit_a.

The original appointment of a patient or Doctor should not be able to be completely overwritten with a new appointment (New patient, new doctor and new time). This will result in a management issue of the appointment.

[nus-se-bot]

Team's Response

This situation is allowed so that receptionists can use this feature to replace a delete appointment command followed by a add appointment command. In the case where a user does this, it would be intentional as the user would have to specify both doctor and patient nric.

Items for the Tester to Verify

:question: Issue response

Team chose [response.Rejected]

• [x] I disagree

Reason for disagreement: I agree with you guys that such a situation can be allowed for the convenience of a receptionist to replace a delete appointment command followed with an add appointment command.

However, I believe that this situation should still not be left as it is, at least without any way of preventing the user from accidentally overwriting an existing appointment.

You see, it is possible for a scenario in which the receptionists intend to replace the appointment in index 6 with a completely new appointment, but accidentally key in index 5 or 7. This will result in a complete removal of an appointment that should be kept. Seeing as there is no way to retrieve previously deleted appointments, this will result in further administrative complications for the receptionists, rendering the product to be more of a hassle to use than improving their efficiency in managing adminstrative tasks as intended, as stated in the User Guide.

Moreover, for receptionists who are less meticulous, they may not even be aware of this error made and this situation of a missing valid appointment and an existing invalid appointment will still exist within MediConnect database. This will further complicate the administrative matters making it harder to backtrack when the error was actually made.

Secondly, let's talk about practicality. How often would there be such a case whereby there is a new appointment to be added the same time that an old appointment is to be deleted? Personally speaking, I don't believe this would be a common situation that the receptionists would face. This is especially so, given that there are limited reasons for an appointment to be deleted in the very first place.

Weighing both practicality and potential issues that this feature flaw can create, I strongly believe that this should not be rejected in light of the possible headaches that receptionists can have while dealing with the issues created, further reducing their effectiveness and efficiency.

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