Chief Medical Officer
Chief Medical Officer
Superiors: Captain
Difficulty: Hard
Guides: Standard Operating Procedure, Standard Operating Procedure (Medical), Guide to Medical, Guide to Surgery, Guide to Chemistry, Guide to Virology, Guide to Genetics, Guide to Cadavers, Clone Memory Disorder
Access: Medical (All), Chief Medical Officer's Office, Bridge
Duties: Coordinate doctors and other medical employees, keep medical bay stocked, ensure your staff knows how to save lives, make sure the revivable dead are resuscitated.
High-Risk Items: Advanced Compact Defibrillator, Advanced Hypospray
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 |
Departmental Head
Captain
| Captain • | Head of Personnel • | Head of Security • | Chief Engineer • | Research Director • | Chief Medical Officer • | Quartermaster |
| Guide to Command • | Paperwork • | Faxes • | AI Modules • | Station Goals • | Purchasable Shuttles • | High-Risk Items • | Space Law • | Chain of Command • | Standard SOP • | Command SOP |
The Chief Medical Officer is in charge of the health of the crew. They make sure that the medical department is well stocked and prepared for emergencies, and that the medical staff is treating people - both alive and dead - effectively and generally working for the good health of the station.
Overview
You control the entire medical bay. Make sure all the medical staff are doing their job well, the department has enough supplies to take on possible unforeseen emergencies, the station's crewmen have their suit sensors on, etc. If you're the only person on the medical team, then you'll have trouble doing your job.
You should know almost everything about medicine, so you can advise and partially perform surgeries, request chemicals to be made, treat alive and dead bodies and everything else, but you are not a super-doctor. Your job is to make sure everybody else in medbay can do and is doing their job, not to be out there on the field yourself. You can take over for someone if there's an emergency, but otherwise, you're an administrator, not a field medic.
Your Job
You are often regarded as the least important Head of Staff, but in reality, you hold a great deal of power. Without a competent Chief Medical Officer coordinating things, Medbay often dissolves into a chaotic mess that only manages to heal anybody through sheer coincidence.
Your job is to make sure that the Medical Doctors are competent and know how to heal any injured crew that come in, the Chemists are supplying the department with all the different medicines required to treat patients, the Paramedic is properly responding to emergencies and retrieving dead bodies from outside of Medbay, the Virologist promptly handles viral outbreaks, and that the Coroner and Geneticists are cloning or passing the dead bodies for revival to doctors.
Specialised Staff
When the round starts, review your medical staff. Remember that Surgeons, Nurses, and regular Doctors are all the same job, and they're all required to treat patients. Their specific title just indicates a specialization. They can and should be able to be given assignments outside of that, so long as it still falls within the description of Medical Doctor work. If they're unable or unwilling to do basic medical work because "they're a surgeon, not a doctor", then they need to be fired reeducated about what their job entails.
Make sure that you have a Paramedic ready to respond to calls for medical assistance from outside of Medbay, someone manning the reception or at least always near the entrance to handle arrivals and minor cases, and a couple doctors ready to handle patients that require surgical treatment. Each of these assignments is vital for different reasons, and with one of them missing, important patients may be left out of commission for much longer than they need to. If you have dedicated Nurses and/or Surgeons, consider asking Medical Doctors to pass patients in need of light treatment or surgery over to them, respectively, to save on staff who might be needed to take care of more critical patients in the meantime. Make sure that everyone is entirely clear on exactly what their job is and why it is important.
Chemical Fixes
Once your main staff is set up, contact Chemistry and make sure they know what sort of chemicals to make for your doctors, and in what form. Besides medicine required by their Standard Operating Procedure, several other chemicals are important to have for the smooth function of Medbay, and should be mixed up as soon as possible:
- Synthetic Meat - used as biomass fuel for cloning pods. For more information see Guide to Cloning;
- Sanguine Reagent - rapidly restores blood levels and is also used as an additional biomass fuel which repairs internal bleeding in cloning. For more information see Guide to Cloning;
- Osseous Reagent - additional biomass fuel which repairs broken bones in cloning. For more information see Guide to Cloning;
- Lazarus Reagent - used for revival of dead bodies, especially of unclonable species;
- Mitocholide - for surgical debridement and rejuvenation of necrotic organs;
- Hydrocodone - behaves as a surgery painkiller for species which cannot use anesthetics;
- Synthflesh - used to treat bodies husked from suffering grave burn injuries.
Responding
As with other Head positions, a large part of your job is to be watchful for any calls for medical assistance. As soon as one comes in, ensure that your Paramedic and Doctors are responding appropriately, and that the rest of your staff is ready to take in anybody who can't be treated in the field.
Getting an Odysseus mech from Robotics can also be of help, as the Mounted Sleeper and Syringe Gun modules are able to synthesize and provide medicine in the field. Make sure that your Paramedic and Doctors know how to operate it; a well-equipped and well-piloted Odysseus can save lives, as well as making it possible for your staff to answer calls they would normally be unable to due to its armour.
Viral Outbreaks
When diseases break out, this is your, the Virologist's, and Chemistry's chance to shine. Try to quarantine any infected crew to stop the disease from spreading. You have a biohazard suit inside of your office - use it to avoid getting infected yourself. Work with the Virologist to figure out the cure - once it's known, order your Chemists to produce it or find out where you can acquire it from, and send it to the Virologist, making sure they begin working on creating a vaccine. The moment it's ready, it should be transported to Chemistry for distribution.
Once the cure or vaccine is available, notify your Doctors so they can treat any incoming personnel. It may even be wise to inform the crew through a station-wide announcement using the request console in your office. If your Paramedic isn't busy, they can assist in distributing the cure/vaccine to any remaining infected crew.
Advanced Hypospray
As an upgrade to the typical medical hypospray, the advanced hypospray found in your office's locker accepts any and all reagents with no safeties to speak of. It comes pre-loaded with 30 units of Omnizine - useful to Chemistry when making Lazarus Reagent - and you can use a syringe to extract it. It's also very valuable to NanoTrasen, so don't lose it!
Appreciation Pay
As a Head of Staff, you have access to the Medical Department's Account number and PIN. Use the funds given to:
- Make cargo purchases.
- Conduct departmental exchanges.
- Give out reasonable bonuses for your overworked but integral subordinates.
Doing Some Harm 
Traitor
So, you're a traitor CMO? Don't fret. You have many possible tools to help with your objectives. Your advanced hypospray will help a bit, try filling it with Morphine, or if you can hack one of the NanoMed Plus vendors, Pancuronium or Sulfonal, for sedation purposes. You have access to Chemistry, so you can sneak in there and make some space lube, thermite, or similar. You can pretend to "heal" hurt targets brought in, easily steal brains from your surgery patients or un-mindshield and mindslave them, and even disrupt some targets getting cloned, or clone people Security wants to stay dead.
As a member of Command, you have a flash and a telescopic baton, as well as the right to carry them without suspicion. Use this to your advantage - you can easily subvert a Cyborg or stun and drag off your target, preferably muted by an injection of certain chemicals from your trusty hypospray.
The bottom line here is to be a bad doctor.
Changeling
As a changeling CMO, you've got plenty of options. One of your major goals is to capture Genetics or the Morgue so you can absorb genomes quite easily. The spray bottle and advanced hypospray can both be used to knock out victims, and you can lure many humans on the pretence of healing them. CMOlings are best played stealthily. Try not to get anyone too suspicious with you.
Vampire
You have an effectively infinite access to monkeys in Genetics, which can be used to stave off your hunger if you fear detection. People you do surgery on cannot scream for help, or indeed even notice you are draining their blood - replacing it with blood from blood bags located in the ORs means that you can get some truly impressive amounts from just one patient.
Command is limited to one antagonistic role per shift with a 10% chance of a second roll. This applies to traitors, vampires, changelings, and cultist.