Medical Doctor

MEDICAL STAFF
Medical Doctor	Access: Medbay, Morgue, Surgery Additional Access: Not defined Difficulty: Easy Supervisors: Chief Medical Officer Duties: Save lives, run around the station looking for victims, scan everyone in sight Guides: Guide to medicine, Guide to Surgery

Oh, are you hurt? Here, let me kiss it better...

You are the Medical Doctor. You are at once essential and useless. With the advent of "perfect" cloning, saving lives is no longer as all important as it used to be. But don't despair! You can still help people! Mostly. You spawn with a First-Aid Kit and in Medbay where there are spares along with more specialized kits. There're also two syringe guns if you can get to one of them fast enough. Ammunition in the form of large amount of chemical medication can be found in the nearby vending machine pharmacy, but it's got nothing on what chemists can make.

Medbay

Doctor, Doctor!

When you are a Medical Doctor, your job is to heal people, save them from the brink of death, and dump those that do die into Genetics for cloning. You can diagnose injuries and diseases with the help of a health analyzer, conveniently located in all medical kits, or even your PDA, but then again so can everyone else. And they will. No one waits for the medic to help, or often even for a medic to open the doors. You may have to take drastic measures to get people to stop doing your job for you.

A quick overview of all the damage types is found below. If you want to conserve supplies or are feeling lazy, it's easier to bring the patient down the main hallway and put them in a sleeper pod, where you can use the attached console to inject them with powerful healing chemicals. This does not work, however, for bringing patients out of critical condition, nor can it fight toxin damage.

Fisticuffs, Knives, and everything in between

Whether it's from fists, bullets or a kitchen knife, it's classified as Brute Damage. Brute Damage is inevitably the most common form of damage, and is easily treated. Apply bruise packs conservatively until they are fine and dandy.

Brute Damage takes the form of big red streaks, or blue-purple-red messes. Apply Bruise Packs in those areas (usually head and chest), or inject with Tricordrazine or, in cases of a helpful Chemist and extreme damage, Bicardizine.

Fire is hot!

The second type of damage is Burn Damage. This is caused by fire and blisteringly high (or low) temperatures. If it's minor burns, apply A LITTLE ointment or force feed them a kelotane pill.

Burn Damage appears as grey streaks on a person's body, so apply the ointment in those locations (usually the chest area).

Poisons and You

Toxin Damage is the third kind of damage, and is often caused by rogue doctors. Plasma and radiation are other common soruces.

Be it from a the aptly named Toxin bottle, sleep toxins, or Radiation, Toxin Damage has no visible form, so can only be recognised via analyzing. Inject with Antitox, or feed them Antitox pills. Either way, they'll be right as meteor rain.

Suffocation, Asphyxiation, and general lack of air

The last kind of Damage often occurs when a patient is in critical health, and is usually accompanied by a another type of damage. Suffocation can be cured using Dexalin or Dexalin Plus, a Sleeper, or plain fresh air. If the patient is in critical condition, then heal the other damage, and the suffocation should recover naturally.

Inaprovaline halts Suffocation damage when in Critical, but the patient can still die from progressing beatings, burns or toxins.

Surgery

The main reason you'll come in this room is to grab one of the health scanners on the top-right table. These fashionable eyewear pieces let you see people's healthbars over their head. Not only is this useful for finding critical patients quickly in a crowd, but the red cross next to their healthbar will change to a sickly green face if they're infected with a virus, or a purple xenomorph if they're infected with an alien larva. Chemists and Geneticists will sometimes want these, too, for whatever reason.

You will occasionally come in here to debrain changeling victims, repair eye damage caused by screwdriver-wielding assistants or flash-happy shitcurity. You can also forcibly sedate someone, cut out their appendix and force-feed it to them as they wake up groggy with a mixture of confusion and numb, ambiguous horror and revulsion. Outside of this, though, it's mostly unused.

A guide to surgery is here.

Modern Miracles

A Deep Freeze

Setting up Cryogenics is easy and simple. Idiot-proof, even, but many forget to do it until it's too late.

Firstly, ensure the O2 canisters are connected to the ports. There's a wrench nearby to do this. Secondly, fill the tubes with Cryoxadone - beakers should be on the table. Then turn it on, and reduce temperatures until it's at least below 200 for maximum effect.

Before placing someone in cryo, be sure to remove any insulated bodywear such as RIG suits, fire suits and bomb suits. People that have received cold resistance superpowers from the Geneticist can't be chilled in cryo and will have to be treated with alternative methods.

The Mad Rush

If the Patient is in critical condition, especially when the health is negative, you have to work fast. Administer inaprovaline mercilessly, whilst you attempt to drag them around. If Cryo isn't set up, throw them in a sleeper, fill them with rejuvenators, and set up Cryo. If Cryo is set up, strip the patient inside the Cryo room (to prevent people from nabbing their stuff), and stuff them in a tube. Wait a while. Click on the tube to analyze their health, and if they are still in critical condition, leave them to cool off a bit longer. If not, heal them normally, accept their kudos (or sarcastically do so if they offer none) and then send them on their way.

Medibots - Replace you, will they?

Medibots are the bane of any Doctor - their very existence is to replace you!

Not to worry! You can simply do your job by managing the Medibot. Using your ID, you can alter his settings, and fill him with a beaker of delicious Tricordrazine or Alkysine, and let him inject away!

Concurrently, you can fill him with a beaker of Polytrinic Acid, or even Emag him. Once Emagged, the delightful little medibot buzzes around injecting everyone and everything with not-so-helpful chemicals - like Beepsky without the I AM THE LAW.

No Respect

Nobody respects most of Medbay or the MDs. You'll run into this in many shades - an assistant that doesn't know when to stop pissing you off, shitcurity coming in to stun or flashbang at random, a traitor that wants Chemistry access, or an engineer who needs geneticist superpowers for space exploration building his autism fortress while his butt-buddy chain-recalls the shuttle for over half an hour because "WE CAN FIX THIS LAGGY SHITFEST GUYS COME ON."

You will, inevitably, have invaders. If you give the slightest damn about doing your job, you're going to have to beat into these invader's heads that you intend to do it. Otherwise, they intend to ignore your existence and do your job for you. Your best defense, here, is your coworkers - with up to 5 Medical Doctors, the CMO, Virologist, two Chemists, two Geneticists and countless patients, Medbay is packed, and all of them feel the same sting of disregard cast at them by fellow crewmates. If you band together, you will usually far outnumber any lone threat that wants to break down every window and grille in your workplace.

If your invader doesn't listen, remember that you are a holy warrior in one of the most unholy places on the station. While sleep toxin doesn't do jack (and if you're running around with a syringe gun, it's better in the hands of chemists) you still have a strait jacket, some handy-dandy soporifics that act like horse-tranquilizers in the sleepers, and I hear the surgery room goes woefully unused nowadays...

Hello, I'm Dr. Death

So, you are a traitor? DON'T HIT SUICIDE JUST YET! There is so many wondrous, terrible things you can do. When people are injured, they are taken to medbay to be "doctored" by you and other people. You can then shoot them up with sleep toxin, take them some place private in medbay and take what you want, or go for malpractice to end them. This is very good if you happen to be in a crowded area and stab the HoP and drag them back to Medical when people are in a panic. 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 (and often the chaplain will cremate them, or the chef will take some meat).

To Conclude

You are a Doctor. Your job is to help people - sometimes forcibly - and dealing with the fallout from the numerous violent calamities that inevitably descend on the station. You serve both as go-between for the station and large and the more specialized medical departments.

If you seek respect in this job, you have to go out of your way to earn it. But never forget the damage you can inflict on the unwary.