>I think i should have used a guid as a hidden unique-id.

Yep, in general it is better to have one unique identifier with no meaning,
rather than requiring a "double link".

>i did try the 'order by patients.name' (and p.name) and both situations
>report no column of this name, so no fix yet!

Well, you can always try ordering by its ordinal position, e.g.

select p.unique_id, p.name, s.additional_info, s.name
from patients p
left outer join patientstatus s on (p.unique_id=s.unique_id)
order by 2

This should work,
Set