Chief Medical Officer

MEDICAL & COMMAND STAFF

Chief Medical Officer

Access: All Medical Departments, including your office, Bridge, Engineering, Construction, Research. Qualifications: At least 35 years of age, M.D., 5 years medical experience. Employers: The Stellar Corporate Conglomerate Supervisors: Captain Duties: Coordinate the doctors, pharmacists, and psychiatrist to ensure the health of all crew. Guides: Guide to Medicine, Guide to Chemistry, Guide to Surgery, Chain of Command, Guide to Faxes

The Chief Medical Officer is in charge of the health of the crew. They make sure that Paramedics are staged at shootouts, that Physicians are triaging injuries, and that Pharmacists aren't just shooting up red nightshade in their laboratory. They are also the command member to listen to when a medical biohazard has broken out on the ship.

Overview

You manage the entire medbay. Your primary task is to make sure everyone is doing their jobs, and not taking over someone else's. Other than treating injured crew, it is your responsibility to ensure that all crew are using their suit sensors when appropriate.

You are the highest-ranking medical doctor on the ship. The ideal Chief Medical Officer should have the knowledge to perform common surgical operations, manufacture most basic pharmaceuticals, and treat common injuries. You should allow your subordinates to handle the bulk of the work and only jump in to help new players or fill in critical roles that your character would be able to perform. Like any other command member, your job is to delegate all of the work to everyone else, and be liaison between command and the medical department.

Medical Procedure

Without a competent Chief Medical Officer coordinating things, the medbay often dissolves into a chaotic mess that only manages to help anybody through sheer coincidence. Your primary duty is to ensure that the crew is in top possible physical and mental shape.

To do this, you will need the help of your assigned crew.

• Medical doctors come in two varieties; Physicians are responsible for general treatment (and can perform minor surgeries like bone repair), and Surgeons perform intensive, specialized surgery.
• The Pharmacist is responsible for the manufacture of important medicines.
• The Paramedic is responsible for transporting injured crewmen to the medbay, and stabilizing injured people while out in the field.
• The Psychologist is responsible for the mental health of crew, and can also prescribe medication and diagnose mental maladies as they see fit.

Getting Started

When the round starts, review your medical staff and assigned jobs. Physicians, surgeons, and paramedics are all essential medical personnel, and their specific title just indicates a specialization. They can and should be able to be given assignments outside of that, within the realm of common sense; a paramedic shouldn't be doing surgery, but if there's no physician, a surgeon shouldn't be refusing to treat patients in the General Treatment Room.

Make sure that you have a dedicated paramedic team ready to respond to calls for medical assistance, someone manning the front desk to handle arrivals and minor cases, and someone - preferably a physician - waiting in the wings to handle critical cases that require major treatment or surgery. Each of these three assignments is vital for different reasons, and, once given a job, your staff should focus on doing that job exclusively and only help out when asked for instead of jumping in whenever they feel more competent. If they don't, and they try to do someone else's job, it means that you have two doctors doing a job that could be done by one, and an area which is left understaffed. Make sure that everyone is entirely clear on exactly what their job is and why it is important.

Make sure the GTR is prepared; blood bags should be attached to IVs, full oxygen tanks complete with medical masks should hang by the side, and the cryo tubes should be cooling at a temperature anywhere from 120 to 150 Kelvin. Also, make sure to fill the oxygen tanks attached to the stabilizer harnesses, and turn on their emergency positive pressure!

When everyone has their assignments, make sure that everybody has their medical belts stocked with the basic tools of the trade - advanced trauma kits, advanced burn kits, inaprovaline, and so forth. Paramedics should keep a variety of medication and emergency equipment on hand (such as stabilizer harnesses and stasis bags), as they'll be expected to deal with pretty much anything in the field.

(Also, medibots aren't that useful for a crowded medbay. What is useful are cleanbots, especially when your medbay has just survived a shootout.)

Chemical Fixes

Once your main staff is set up, contact the Pharmacy and get them to start making medicines for your doctors. The basic medications that should be on hand are:

• Butazoline: A stronger counterpart to bicaridine; heals brute damage.
• Dermaline: A stronger counterpart to kelotane (dermaline should not be mixed with kelotane). Heals burn damage, but doesn't prevent infections.
• Dexalin Plus: A stronger counterpart to dexalin. Provides 80% blood oxygenation when the lungs are injured, and helps prevent brain damage from low blood oxygenation from any source. Lethal to Vaurca.
• Mortaphenyl: A very strong painkiller that causes blurriness in vision. Shouldn't be mixed with alcohol.
• Alkysine: Heals brain damage above 85% blood oxygenation. Can be administered by IV drip.

Make sure that your doctors know that the medications are available and where to find them. Once you have all of the basic medicines, have the Pharmacy mix up organ regeneratives, better cryogenic chemicals, anti-radiation drugs, and any prescriptions present in character records.

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, make sure that your paramedics are responding and that the rest of your staff are at the bar ready to take in anybody who can't be treated in the field.

Your paramedics should also have equipment such as inflatable doors and voidsuits at the ready, in case of a call inside an area experiencing atmospheric issues. Also make sure that your responders understand that the blinking lights on emergency shutters indicate a very atmospherically-hostile environment behind it.

If you want, you can also ask the Machinist for an exosuit, preferably with mounted sleepers. Provided your paramedic knows how to operate it, an exosuit can be an extremely useful tool that allows access to safe response to dangerous areas, quicker.

Premium Hypospray and the Zeng-Hu Body Scanner

Every medical professional gets access to a hypospray, but you possess the greatest of them all; a premium hypospray, capable of instantly injecting up to thirty units of medicine at a time (you can adjust the injection rate by alt-clicking, or right-clicking and finding Toggle Injection Rate). Unless you're in a very busy situation, there's a likelihood that your premium hypospray won't see much use; you can give it to one of your paramedic, or perhaps a physician or surgeon.

The Zeng-Hu body scanner is perhaps one of the most useful tools in your locker; it is a portable body scanner that can print an entire scan with a simple click on the patient in question. It is extremely useful for a patient that must be wheeled into the OR quickly, and as a good CMO it is imperative you leave it in a place accessible to your medbay.

Links to Other Departments

As the CMO, you're the link between the captain, the other heads of staff, and your medical department. Security will often be a source of casualties, whether officers or prisoners; make sure any doctor going to treat a dangerous prisoner has an escort. Science - especially Xenobiology - will send you its share of patients, too. When your equipment gets blown up or starts throwing things at you, Engineering can rebuild it. Mining is a good source of practice often flying to dangerous planets; work with the Operations Manager for when the miners return injured. You will also be required to try to explain why people are going crazy, or returning from the dead. Good luck with that one.