The exercise¶
Step 1 — Model it¶
15 to 20 minutes
In Airtable, create 3 to 4 linked tables. A suggested starting structure:
| Table | Fields | Links |
|---|---|---|
| Patients | name, date of birth, community or location, contact | |
| Visits | date, reason for visit | linked to a Patient, linked to a Clinician |
| Clinicians | name, role | linked to Visits |
| Medicines (optional) | name | linked to Visits if prescribed |
Why these fields?¶
The structure above is not arbitrary. Each table is a thing you have many of, and each field earns its place by being a fact about that thing. (If you skipped it, Why model data? sets out the reasoning these choices come from.)
- Patients hold the facts that stay true across every visit: name, date of birth, community or location, contact. These belong to the person, not to any single visit, so they are recorded once here and reused.
- Visits hold the facts about one encounter: its date and the reason for it. A visit is its own table because a patient has many of them over time, and each one links back to the patient it belongs to and the clinician who provided it.
- Clinicians are separate because one clinician appears across many visits. Recording them once, and pointing at them, means their name and role are never copied fifty times (and never drift out of step).
- Medicines (optional) become a table for the same reason: a medicine recurs across many visits, so it is a thing in its own right, not a detail retyped each time.
Notice the pattern. A fact that belongs to one specific thing stays a field. A thing that recurs across many rows becomes its own table, joined by a link. As you add your own fields, run each one through the four questions from Why model data?.
As you build, keep asking yourself one question:
The question that is the point of the exercise
Why is this its own table, rather than just another column?
That question is the actual point of the exercise. The tool is just how you practice it.
Step 2 — Make it interactive¶
10 to 15 minutes
Use Airtable's Interfaces feature to build one simple view on top of your tables. For example:
- a form to log a new visit, or
- a dashboard showing visits by clinician.
No code required. Airtable builds this from your existing tables.
Once your tables are linked and you have one Interface working, move on to the reflection and submission.