Practitioner

The Practitioner resource represents a person involved in the healthcare delivery process, either directly or indirectly. This includes doctors, nurses, technicians, and any other healthcare provider.

When to Use Practitioner

Use Practitioner when you need to:

Identify who performed a procedure
Record who created or modified a clinical record
Link professionals to appointments and schedules
Represent healthcare providers in care teams

Required Fields

Field	Description	Example
resourceType	Must be “Practitioner”	Practitioner
name	Professional’s name	See example below

Creating a Practitioner

curl -X POST https://api.esus.health/fhir/Practitioner \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer YOUR_TOKEN" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/fhir+json" \
  -d '{
    "resourceType": "Practitioner",
    "active": true,
    "name": [
      {
        "use": "official",
        "family": "Rodriguez",
        "given": ["Carlos", "Albert"],
        "prefix": ["Dr."]
      }
    ],
    "qualification": [
      {
        "code": {
          "text": "Physician - Internal Medicine"
        }
      }
    ]
  }'

Linking to Patient Records

Practitioners are typically referenced from other resources. For nested participants and performers, the API accepts the standard FHIR reference shape ({ reference: "Practitioner/<uuid>" }):

{
  "resourceType": "Encounter",
  "participant": [
    {
      "individual": {
        "reference": "Practitioner/a7b1c2d3-e4f5-6789-abcd-ef0123456789",
        "display": "Dr. Carlos Rodriguez"
      }
    }
  ]
}

ID format: all resource ids are raw UUIDs (v4). There are no type prefixes such as prac_ or pat_.

Practitioner vs PractitionerRole

Practitioner - Who the person is (name, credentials, identifiers)
PractitionerRole - How they practice (specialty, location, organization)

A single Practitioner can have multiple PractitionerRole entries to represent work at different locations or specialties.