FHIR Chat · nested questionnaires

I was wondering if Questionnaire should be extended to allow Questionnaires to be referenced from another Questionnaire.
This would be quite handy to reuse blocks of questions in different Questionnaires. Right now the only option is to copy&paste the items form Q to Q, or split everything into small Questionnaires (which isn't handy as well).

Patrick Werner (Sep 03 2019 at 16:50):

Tried to search Zulip as this was probably already discussed, but couldn't find something.

Lloyd McKenzie (Sep 03 2019 at 17:18):

It's been discussed, but it makes the QuestionnaireResponse somewhat complicated.

Grahame Grieve (Sep 03 2019 at 18:56):

GF#22356

Eric Haas (Sep 04 2019 at 16:57):

This is something I have been asking all along in the form each item (question) should be its own resource then you mix n match items as you wish. I been told implementers don't want this.... Why is it now OK? what is the difference ( I mean conceptually and not structurally) between making the item element a resource and this?

Lloyd McKenzie (Sep 04 2019 at 17:04):

We haven't decided it's ok. Grahame has asked for it. We haven't said "yes" yet. :)

Paul Lynch (Sep 04 2019 at 17:43):

@Eric Haas Are you suggesting that Questionnaire items would necessarily be external resources, or optionally so? If you have a 100-question form, and have to load those questions as separate resources, I would worry about performance.

Eric Haas (Sep 04 2019 at 17:48):

yes that is essentially what I suggested. The tradeoff is the items could be shared re-used. In essence this is the same as nesting questionnaires with a single item.

Eric Haas (Sep 04 2019 at 17:49):

So I am just asking whether the same issues apply like performance are in play with nested questionnaires.

Paul Lynch (Sep 04 2019 at 17:57):

If items were external resources, how would nested items be handled?

A nested questionnaire would only have the same performance concerns as external items if each nested questionnaire only contained one item (which I guess could be used to achieve what you are looking for in terms of re-use).

I would not object to either approach, as long as they are optional.

Lloyd McKenzie (Sep 04 2019 at 18:26):

We can sort of support questions being independent resource instances now with item.definition - those can point to an element in a logical model that defines the question (and it's possible to have a logical model that contains only one element ).