Physician

The Physician as a role is an extremely important one. If you know what you're doing, as a Physician you will save lives. Nearly every death can be prevented, provided you reach the victim in time. Since Physicians are the only ones with the tools and the in-character experience to save them, Physicians tend to make a lot of friends.

Overview
You start with an advanced first-aid kit and a health analyzer. Your main work will be in the 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 Chemistry for some more specialized ones.

Stay In Your Lane!
As a regular physician, you do general treatments and give scheduled exams to the crew. Remember that you should NOT be performing the jobs of the specialized alt-titles. You are qualified to fill in for these roles if they are empty, but it is detrimental to medical's flow if you walk all over your co-workers trying to do everything else. If you have a paramedic, try to rely on them to bring in the wounded. If you have an Emergency Medical Physician, rely on them to stabilize the patient before they hand them off to you to follow up with treatment. If you have a surgeon, DON'T do surgery.

Handling Patients
You can diagnose injuries with the help of a health analyzer, which you helpfully spawn with. Your PDA can also do a limited health readout.

You NEED to work with the rest of your team in medical to keep things running smoothly.

In terms of your equipment, the general rule is that chemical treatment works at all health levels, whereas physical treatments have limits where they become ineffective. Rolls of gauze and ointment are for minor injuries, and so only work if the brute or burn damage totals less than 50 HP. Advanced Trauma and Burn kits are more effective, and so work all the way to 0 HP. Beyond that, more advanced treatment is needed.

Health runs from 100% to -100%, and it's your job to make sure it doesn't hit the bottom end. Below are the main types of damages and treatments. See the Guide to Medicine for a more detailed overview.

Brute Damage
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.

There are two types of brute damage, bruises and wounds. Bruises are caused by blunt objects. They add to a person's brute damage, but unless particularly severe, they do not cause bleeding.

Wounds and cuts are caused by sharp objects, and cause bleeding, which can only be stopped with medical treatment.

If the patient is not in life-threatening danger, simply have them tell you where they were hit, use the body scanner in Medbay, or get them to strip off their jumpsuit and examine so you can see where. Apply gauze (for minor damage) or advanced trauma kits (for major damage) to affected areas and send them on their way.

Brute Damage takes the form of big red streaks, or blue-purple-red messes. Apply gauze or advanced trauma kits in those areas, inject with Tricordrazine or, in cases of a helpful Chemist and extreme damage, Bicaridine.

Burn Damage
The second type of damage is Burn Damage. This is caused by fires and blisteringly high or low temperatures, such as fire or space.

Burns work similar to wounds. Apply ointment or advanced burn kits to the affected area to heal it, or give them a kelotane pill. Chemicals take a few seconds to work, so don't waste supplies. For severe burns, give them Dermaline (a Chemist will be needed).

Burn Damage appears as grey streaks on a person's body, or you can use the various scanners to tell the location, so apply ointment in those areas (usually the chest area).

Toxin Damage
Toxin Damage is the third kind of damage and is relatively uncommon.

Be it from the aptly named toxin bottle, medicine overdoses, soporific, or radiation, Toxin Damage has no visible form, so can only be recognized via analyzing.

Inject with Dylovene, or give them Dylovene pills. This also shortens the time needed to wake someone up from Soporific or Chloral Hydrate.

Suffocation Damage
The last main kind of damage often occurs when a patient is in critical health (-50% Health), and is usually accompanied by another type of damage.

Suffocation can be cured using Dexalin, Dexalin Plus, or plain fresh air (if the patient is not critical). If the patient is in critical condition, then heal the other damage, and the suffocation should recover naturally. CPR also recovers suffocation damage slowly if the patient is in critical (click on them with an empty hand with the help intent).

Inaprovaline halts Suffocation damage, but only when in Critical.

Uncommon Conditions
Other more unique damages and treatments can be found on the Guide to Medicine.

Genetic diseases can be cured by Ryetalyn.

Give your infected patients antimicrobials to slow the spread and keep them isolated. Wearing gloves and a sterile mask helps to stop anyone else from getting infected.

Blood Loss
See Also: A More Detailed Guide on Blood Loss

Living things have blood. Blood is quite important for them to keep living. Cuts and loss of limbs will cause various amounts of bleeding, which require rolls of gauze or advanced trauma kits to stop.

Blood levels can be found on the health analyzer readout with warnings when levels get too low. Loss of blood can cause fainting or paleness of skin. Blood can either be injected from a donor, or a donor pack can be placed in an IV Drip and connected to the patient.

If you're unsure what blood type to use or the blood type of a patient, O- can be given to anyone. There is a limited supply, so only use it if absolutely necessary. For a more detailed compatibility list, read below.

Compatible Blood Types
When choosing a blood pack, find the patient's medical records either on the Patient Records computer in the lobby, or the "Patient Records" function on your PDA. As a quick reminder, A, B and + are types of markers on blood, O, and - indicate a lack of said markers. Don't give someone markers they don't already have or they'll die. If that doesn't make sense to you, read the next section for a chart on compatible blood types.

If there is no O-negative blood available, and no precise blood type match as an alternative, look for a replacement by these rules:
 * Negative can take only negative.
 * All types can take O.
 * A can take A.
 * B can take B.
 * AB can take A and B.
 * O can take only O.

Shock and Critical Condition
There is three types of medical states. The first is 'shock', which is the least dangerous of the three. If someone takes enough damage from each damage type, they may go into shock. This causes stammering and slow movement, and eventually collapsing and loss of consciousness. This can be cured by dealing with all the other types of damage, or temporarily by using tramadol.

The second is known as 'soft critical'. When someone is below 0% health (having taken more than 100 points of damage), they will suffer shock until they are above 0% health.

The third is known as 'critical' and occurs at -50% health (more than 150 points of damage). At this point, the patient will go unconscious, stop breathing, and take suffocation damage. This can be stopped with Inaprovaline or CPR. Chemical or Cryo treatment is usually necessary at this stage.

Mental Trauma and Policy

 * All characters with a Medical Doctorate degree are capable of diagnosing mental trauma, as well as prescribing medication for their diagnosis.
 * Surgery trained Medical personnel are fully capable of Neuro-surgery where necessary to treat mental trauma.
 * Chemists/Pharmacists are fully capable of synthesizing mental medication, but they cannot diagnose mental trauma.
 * Psychiatrists/Psychologists are the foremost experts on this type of illness, they are the only capable of advanced treatment (Hypnosis, Crystal Therapy, and Isolation) and they should be the first to treat mental trauma when available.

Surgery
Surgery should typically not be performed by Physicians unless no Surgeon or relevantly qualified CMO is available. Please see the Surgeon role here. There are exceptions to this, however, such as cases with critical patients that require immediate care, and a Surgeon will not arrive in time. You should stay in your scope of practice, however.

A guide to surgery, and a guideline for the procedures that Physicians are qualified for, is here.

Cryogenics
Setting up Cryogenics is easy and simple.

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 set the freezer to the minimum to start cooling the chamber down.

In order to use it for a patient, take off any temperature suits that have (RIG, Spacesuits, void suits, fire suits, etc.), grab them, and put them in the cryo tube. Then turn it on and wait. You can monitor the patient's vitals from outside. It's a smart idea to strip them down to their jumpsuit since this will allow cryo to cool them faster. Remember to eject them when they're better.

Medibots
Medibots no longer magically synthesize Tricordrazine, so you have to fill them for them to do any good.

Using your ID, you can alter their settings and fill them with a beaker of your choice.

As a traitor 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.

Traitoring
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 someplace 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 cyborged" and no one will bat an eye at why they are naked, and why they are there. Usually.

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.