Medical Doctor
Medical Doctor
Superiors: Chief Medical Officer
Difficulty: Medium
Guides: Guide to Medicine, Guide to Surgery
Access: Medbay, Morgue, Operating Theatre
Duties: Keep the crew healthy, save lives.
Departmental Head
Chief Medical Officer
| Chief Medical Officer • | Medical Doctor • | Paramedic • | Chemist • | Geneticist • | Virologist • | Psychologist • | Coroner |
| Guide to Medical • | Cadavers • | Guide to Cloning • | Surgery • | Chemistry • | Virology • | Genetics • | MODsuits • | Medical Items • | Medical SOP |
This role is an extremely important one. If you know what you're doing, as a Medical Doctor (Otherwise known as a Surgeon or a Nurse) you will save lives. Nearly every death can be prevented, provided you reach the victim in time. Since Medical Doctors are the only ones with the tools and the in character experience to save them, Medical Doctors tend to make a lot of friends. Your radio key is 'm'.
You should know what most chemical medicines are (not how to make them, although you could use the notes in Chemistry Lab), so look that up on the Guide to Chemistry. It doesn't hurt to know what the other medical stuff does. But if you have a chemist that can make them, he can also tell you how to administer them.
Overview
You start with an advanced first-aid kit. Your main work will be in Medbay, where there are spares, vending machines with more supplies, and more specialized kits. You have some standard medication in the Medical Supplies room, though you should ask the Chemist for some more specialized ones.
As a Medical Doctor, your job is to heal people, save them from the brink of death, and bring those that do die into Genetics for cloning. You can diagnose injuries with the help of a health analyzer. Your PDA can also do a limited health readout.
In terms of your equipment, the general rule is that chemicals require time to metabolize in order to do their job, while trauma kits apply instantly, but have to target the injured area. Additonally, patients in critical state need to be treated with Saline-Glucose Solution, Epinephrine, and, in particularly bad situations, a shock from a defibrillator.
For light injuries, the chemicals found in the sleepers are more than enough. For moderate to severe injuries, automenders, trauma kits, and cryotubes should be used, though sleepers still help. Critical patients require more complex healing, as outlined in the section below. Remember to always use the body scanner to check for internal injuries, which require surgical intervention.
Consult Guide to Medicine for specific information about treatment.
Critical States
There are three type of critical states. The first is shock; this occurs when patients is at or below 0 health (having taken at least 100 points of damage). This causes stammering, fainting, and an inability to see correctly. This can be cured by healing enough damage to bring them back up to 25 health, or by using Saline-Glucose Solution.
The second state is cardiac failure, which has a chance of occurring when a patient's shock is left untreated too long. The patient will be unable to see well, unable to breathe, and they will fall down often. When a patient's heart is failing, their condition will progressively worsen until they begin to undergo cardiac arrest. Cardiac failure can be treated with Atropine, Epinephrine, or Heparin, and is extremely unlikely to go away by itself.
The third state, cardiac arrest, is extremely lethal. It will almost immediately cause the patient to drop to the ground and rapidly take brain and respiratory damage. If left untreated, cardiac failure results in very rapid death. Treating cardiac arrest requires a defibrillator (handheld or otherwise).
Surgery
You'll have to deal with broken bones, appendicitis, and autopsies. All of which can be performed by you, and only you (IC anyway) .
A guide to surgery is here.
Medibots
Medibots magically synthesize Saline-Glucose Solution, Salbutamol, and Charcoal, so you don't have to fill them with beakers of other chemicals for them to be effective. Good news for you!
Using your ID, you can alter its settings, and fill it with a beaker of a medicine of your choice.
As a traitor, you can fill it with a beaker of a dangerous chemical, or even emag it. Once emagged, the delightful little medibot buzzes around injecting everyone and everything with Pancuronium, causing quite a bit of havoc if not spotted quickly.
Useful Tips
- If you do not know how to treat something properly, ASK! A dumb question is better than malpractice.
- Equip yourself. You should always wear a medical belt, a health scanner HUD, a labcoat, latex or nitrile gloves and a sterile mask.
- Do not neglect carrying a handheld defibrillator - it is an incredibly potent tool for saving critical patients.
- The health analyzer is your right hand, the advanced body scanner is the left. It never hurts to scan anyone. Always be on the watch for damaged internal organs, bones, and internal bleeding!
- Try to carry a basic first aid kit. The advanced one you start with will usually be enough for the whole round, but the basic one is better in a pinch.
- The front desk should always be manned, and the crew monitoring computer watched.
- The medical closet has a box of autoinjectors. These injectors are one-use and contain Epinephrine. Use them to stabilize critical patients!
- Medical hyposprays allow you to instantly administer certain medicines, such as Epinephrine, and a robust doctor will use that fact to administer mixtures of chemicals that quickly help critical patients.
- Treat bleeding and suffocating patients before putting them into cryotubes, they may die inside if you don't. Critical patients are almost guaranteed to die.
- Remember to check on cryo patients regularly. People don't like being left in there forever.
- Remember to use sleepers. They can dispense valuable chemicals. But remember, you can't treat critical patients in them.
- If the chemist made healing chems, it's usually a good idea to keep a few pills or a bottle on you.
- The labcoat has two slots you can put small items into. Use it to carry spare gear.
- Infected wounds are usually caused by doctors not washing their hands before doing surgery. The infection itself can be treated with spaceacillin.
- In case of a virus, use internals, procure a biosuit, distribute the cure, and bring infected people to isolation.
- If you are doing bone surgery, and the body part you're trying to repair has more damage than 25, it will NOT be able to be repaired.
Bad Healthcare 
There are so many wonderfully terrible things you can do. See that sleepy pen item? Guess what, when people get stabbed with those, they drag them to med bay to be "doctored" by you and other people. You can then take them some place private in Medbay, and take what you want or go for malpractice to end them. You can hide victims by putting little notes by morgue trays saying "This man has been borged" or "This man has been cloned" and no one will bat an eye at why they are naked, and why they are there. Usually.
As a surgeon, you have access to anesthetic tanks. Pretending someone needs surgery and hooking them up to anesthetic is a relatively safe way to knock out a target. If you don't mind, or can get away with a much more obvious attack, a handheld defibrillator, when subjected to an EMP or emag, becomes a truly formidable weapon, capable of instantly knocking out the target when used on harm intent.
Your medical access means that you can steal medicine for yourself and other antagonists, which can help a lot in extended engagements with Security. You can also stealthily clone people that have been executed, and perform surgery on those unfortunate enough to suffer internal injuries.
Roleplay Tips
- You most likely have a decent knowledge of people and medicines. Use it to help people.
- Feel free to play a nice guy, or the next House. Just make sure people get healed, it's what you're there for after all.