TGMC:Guide to Medicine

This guide assumes that you are a medical role, if you are not a medical role you will have to contend with certain fumble checks in advanced medical care so please keep that in mind.

Medical care is, quite literally, the difference between life and death and you should absolutely know what you're doing before attempting to render aid - you could make things worse. If you're going to treat someone, you're going to have to know what tools you need, how to identify injuries, what machinery and facilities you must use, and how to keep people from dying while in treatment.

Identification

You're going to want the proper equipment to diagnose an injury before anything else, so be sure to grab a medical HUD and wear it so you can actually identify who needs your help and grab a health analyzer to see what is exactly wrong with them. Diagnosis is the first and foremost step in administering treatment.

Types of basic damage

Humans can be injured in a multitude of ways, from the immediately obvious to the more subtle.

• Brute is the most common type of damage you'll most likely come across and is a catch-all term for physical trauma: Cutting, slashing, bashing, battering, gunshots and so on. It is also the damage type to most likely have additional complications associated with it, such as organ damage, broken bones, internal bleeding and so on. Severe brute damage is immediately obvious, even to those without a scanner, as significant brute trauma will cause blood to soak through the patient's clothes noticeable with a shift-click examine.
• Burn will be the second most common type of damage you'll encounter and refers to the injuries acquired from fire, acid and ambient temperature extremes (such as the cold from Ice Planet). Burns usually do not have other complications associated with them, nor cause bleeding but are not as obvious to the casual observer.
• Toxin damage is a less commonly encountered damage type and you're less liable to come across it. Toxin damage can be caused by organ failure, overdoses, chemical side-effects and, rarely, deliberate poisoning. Toxin damage has no visible external tells but someone with large amounts of build-up will be vomiting.
• Suffocation damage is more common than toxin damage but almost just as invisible. Suffocation is caused by oxygen deprivation, blood loss and certain types of organ damage. Someone suffering from suffocation will be gasping, noticeable in the chat window.
• Halloss damage is not really a damage type but I would be remiss to not at least mention it. Halloss is shorthand for hallucination damage, that is, damage that is not physically present and you can treat it as something akin to fatigue. It's most common source is from a Queen screech and alien tackles. You cannot treat halloss, but its recovery can be expedited by standing still and the "Hold!" order.

Types of advanced damage

If you looked at the above section and thought to yourself "That doesn't seem so bad", then I have some disappointing news for you as there is an additional layer of complications to manage. These types of damage are the results of complications from the above sources and they are as follows:

• Pain is caused by near every damage type and for this reason, you should carry painkillers at all times. Pain severity reflects the type and severity of the injury sustained, with burns causing the most pain of any of the damage types. Pain can also be accrued from halloss and the effects of MP equipment (batons, tear gas and so on). Pain causes slowdown, stuttered speech, knock-down and even unconsciousness.
• External bleeding is caused by brute damage and randomly occurred when it is received, but is more likely to happen with severe damage as a matter of statistical probability. Bleeding will cause slowdown and blood loss - resulting in a fast build-up of suffocation damage, and then toxin damage if left untreated.
• Fractures are a direct result of brute damage and have a chance of happening when the damage to a body part exceeds a certain amount. For the extremities (arms, hands, legs and feet) this is 25 damage. For the chest, head and groin it is 50. Fractures have varying effects depending on where they are found but all cause large amounts of pain and they will worsen if left untreated and the patient allowed to move.
• Internal bleeding is caused randomly when brute damage is received but most often is caused by armour-piercing attacks. Internal bleeding cannot be patched like external bleeds can and will slowly cause untreatable brute damage in the affected area - followed by blood loss and even death.
• Infections are caused by failing to properly follow surgical procedure and untreated brute and burn injuries, though not all injuries will become infected. Infections will cause a slow-build-up of toxin damage if left untreated but the true horror of an infection is if it is allowed to go necrotic - dealing massive damage to the affected body part and will quickly result in death if not treated.
• Organ damage can be caused by a number of things - brute trauma, chemicals, overdoses, toxin damage and fractures in the affected bodypart. Most non-vital organs when damaged cause a moderate build-up of toxin damage when they themselves are damaged, but the heart and lungs will deal oxygen instead. The brain does not cause damage but it will cause the patient to drop things and they will simply drop-dead permanently if it is damaged too much. A severely damaged brain or heart will prevent any kind of revival, short of admin intervention.
• Eye damage is still technically organ damage, but it does not cause any kind of damage build-up, nor is it a vital organ like the brain. Instead, when the eyes are damaged, they will cause blindness and pain. Eye damage is gained rarely by brute trauma to the head and more commonely by welding without protection.
• Shrapnel and foreign objects is anything that has become embedded in the patient - causing a build-up of brute damage if the patient moves without the affected area being splinted.
• Alien infestation is the result of getting too friendly with a facehugger. If left untreated, the patient will birth a healthy, bouncing baby larva who will one day grow up to do the same thing to you and your friends. A scanner will register it as a "foreign object", much like shrapnel.

Treatment

Now that you know the signs and the effects of various damage, it is time for you to learn how to treat them.

• Brute - Brute can be treated directly with salve and trauma kits, and chemically with bicardine and tricordazine.
• Burn - Burn can be treated directly with salve and burn kits, and chemically with kelotane, dermaline and tricordazine. As well as surgically through the autodoc's Surgical Burn treatment.
• Toxin - Toxin can be treated with dylovene and tricordazine, as well as with the autodoc's Toxin Chelation treatment.
• Suffocation - Can be treated with CPR (clicking on a fellow, unconscious Human with a free hand on help intent) but more practically with dexalin and dexalin+. Dexalin+ works instantly but can only be found roundstart as an autoinjector.

• Pain - Pain can be treated with paracetamol (mild relief), tramadol (strong relief) and oxycodone (relieves all pain).
• Fractures - Splints will prevent the worsening of fractures and help manage the ill-effects of a broken bone. To treat, surgery must be performed - either manually or via the autodoc's Broken Bone Surgery treatment.
• External bleeding - Can be treated with bandages or trauma kits.
• Internal bleeding - Can be halted with quick-clot, but it will not halt bleeding. Normally requires surgery or the autodoc's Internal Bleeding treatment to fix, however, a bicardine overdose will also heal internal bleeding. Make sure to give the patient anything that treats burns before doing so.