In-frame length of stay

The stay visible in the camera viewfinder


I'm trying to come up with a name for length of stay when I only want to describe the length of stay that occurs between two fixed points (in this case, 9th Sep and 16th Sep). I'm trying to avoid labels like "occupied bed days in period" because I want the term to convey a sense of agency and control to the clinicians who'll be looking at it. I started off with "delimited length of stay" as a working title, but I posted on LinkedIn to see if anyone could suggest a better name.

A diagram showing the lengths of stay of three imaginary inpatients, two of whose stays overlap the reporting period
The top patient arrived and departed within the reporting period, so their length of saty stays unchanged. The middle patient had already been in hospital for half a day befor ethe reporting period started, so I;ve subtracted that half-day from their length fo stay to get a delimited length of stay of 2.5 days. The thir dpatient overklapped the reporting period at both ends and their delimited length fo stay has been truncated accordingly.

Here are some of the suggestions: Focus length of stay. Frame length of stay. Aspect length of stay. Windowed length of stay. Interval length of stay.

I like all of these, but what happened to my thought-process is that the first three suggestions got me thinking more about photography metaphors. It occurred to me that I am looking at length of stay here in a similar way to how a photographer looks at their subject through a camera viewfinder. The viewfinder frame limits what gets included in the shot and what gets excluded.

A diagram showing the lengths of stay of three imaginary inpatients, two of whose stays overlap the camera viewfinder
Which bits of the patients' length of stay falls within the camera viewfinder? What is the in-frame length of stay?

So there we have it: in-frame length of stay!

[4 October 2024]