What to do with junior...

[JLM]

What is the best way to handle juniors and seniors and II's and III's ?
And why isn't there a field for that so they don't mess up sort orders (Alan Smith Jr comes after Zacharia Smith) or names (ala Mr John Jr Smith)
Should we tack it onto the first name or the last name? Which kludge creates less of a vacuum, so to speak?

JLM

[jsalmon]

What is the best way to handle juniors and seniors and II's and III's ?

I think it can be situational. If it's any help, my family handles it in the first name position. E.g. Dwayne Jr. However, for academic suffixes and such, I would put it at the end of the Last Name E.g. "Salmon, DMD" or "Salmon, III".

And why isn't there a field for that so they don't mess up sort orders (Alan Smith Jr comes after Zacharia Smith) or names (ala Mr John Jr Smith)

I think it's been sufficient to tack it into the name fields. I don't even see a feature request for this so I guess it's not too annoying for users.
On a different note, what sort order are you referring to that is messed up? More specifically, what grid in the program is the order putting Z before A. (Note that Family Members list is ordered by guarantor then by birth dates)

[JLM]

It was always a nuisance for me in dentrix and still is I guess. We all have our pet peeves.

If you have a common name like David Smith, and then add jr to the last name field, when you search for a patient, David Smith Jr will be after Zachary Smith and probably will not show on the patient search page at all until you enter the first name. But say there are six David Smiths and I forget the Jr part and I bring up the wrong David Smith and ... this is how accidents happen. We were doing it this way in dentrix and it did cause problems for us.

Putting it in the first name field avoids this problem but then the patient's name is printed as David Jr Smith which isn't particularly elegant given how easy it is to program around this issue (or would have been ten versions ago anyway...)

I was curious what the best alternative with the least gotchas was.

JLM

[dqadri]

I'm running into this same issue now, and I wanted to see what other people are currently doing with this with their OD.

I'm in the process of converting my VixWin Platinum database from a standalone mode to bridge mode, and as I'm checking my mapping, I'm finding this same issue... I have many people who are "Jr" "Sr", several "III" and even one "IV".

My thought is that within Open Dental, to keep the last name consistent and then add the suffix into the first name field. This would help the sorting order when viewing lists of patients. The only drawback would be when printed, it would look odd like "Robert Jr Smith".

What is everyone else doing currently?

[KevinRossen]

We are using the preferred name field for this. Example: "Eddy Jr" or "John III" and we have that field in our appointment view and other places.

[dqadri]

This is slightly off topic, but what does everyone do with the "senior" person in a junior/senior combo. Do they leave it without a suffix, or add "Sr" to their name?

-edit-

I just found this: http://schmidtgen.com/wordpress/2013/10 ... -cartoons/ for the serious genealogist. Why do we make everything so confusing??!