inpatient

inpatient — noun

1. a person who receives medical treatment while staying overnight or longer at a h

1.nounB2
Definition

a person who receives medical treatment while staying overnight or longer at a hospital, rather than visiting for a short appointment and then going home.

Example

Sari's doctor recommended she become an inpatient for the heart surgery.

collocation: become an inpatient

After the accident, Gabriel spent three days as an inpatient at the city hospital.

collocation: spend time as an inpatient

Common collocations
  • as an inpatient
  • become an inpatient
  • treat as an inpatient
  • admit as an inpatient
  • inpatient care
  • inpatient unit
Synonyms
  • patient

    broader term for anyone receiving medical care; an inpatient is a specific type of patient who stays overnight

  • hospital patient

    nearly synonymous but includes outpatients who visit the hospital briefly; inpatient specifically means a patient who stays overnight

Antonyms
  • outpatient

    a patient who visits a clinic or hospital for treatment but does not stay overnight

Grammar Patterns

[countable] noun

Usage Note

The word implies an overnight or longer stay. Contrasts with outpatient, who visits a hospital or clinic for treatment without staying overnight. Common in medical records, insurance forms, and hospital administration.

Common Mistakes

The doctor saw me as an inpatient for a quick check-up.
The doctor saw me as an outpatient for a quick check-up.
An inpatient stays overnight; a check-up without a stay makes you an outpatient.
I was an inpatient at the clinic for two hours.
I was an inpatient at the hospital for two nights.
An inpatient stays at least one night; a short visit makes you an outpatient.

Synonym discussion

Sense: noun/1

An inpatient is a patient who stays overnight in a hospital for treatment. The general term patient covers anyone receiving medical care — in a clinic, at a doctor's office, or in a hospital — without specifying whether they stay overnight. Outpatient is the direct opposite: a person who visits a hospital or clinic for an appointment, test, or minor procedure and leaves the same day. In hospital settings, resident is sometimes used informally to describe someone living temporarily in a facility, but it is not specific to medical patients. For example: 'The hospital discharged Vivek as an outpatient after his X-ray, but Nora was admitted as an inpatient for her surgery.'

patient ↗outpatient ↗resident ↗

Common collocations

Nouns

  • inpatient care
  • inpatient treatment
  • inpatient unit
  • inpatient facility
  • inpatient stay

Phrases

  • admit someone as an inpatient
  • treat someone as an inpatient
  • become an inpatient

Prepositions

  • as an inpatient
  • for inpatients

Etymology

LatinEnglish

Formed in English in the late 1800s by combining the prefix in- ('within') with patient, which comes from Latin patiens ('suffering'). The word was created to distinguish hospital patients who stay overnight from those who visit for treatment only, who came to be called outpatients.