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

The Chief Medical Officer is in charge of the health of the crew. They make sure that the Medical Doctors are treating people effectively, and ignore the Medical Interns making sure the Pharmacists are working for the good of the ship.

Overview

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

You are the medical expert leader on the ship. The ideal Chief Medical Officer would 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 or what you have written in your records. The objective in mind is ensuring that everyone in the department has their place; if you delegate all of your duties completely, you've lost your own place you can sit back and relax.

Your Job

You are often regarded as the least important Head of Staff, but in reality, you hold power over life and death a great deal of power. Without a competent Chief Medical Officer coordinating things, the medbay often dissolves into a chaotic mess that only manages to heal anybody through sheer coincidence or that one first responder who you should really ahelp for doing surgery again.

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 take several shapes; Physicians and Surgeons are responsible for general treatment and surgery, but have different, and obvious, specialties. The Pharmacist is responsible for the manufacture of important medicines. The Psychologist is responsible for the mental health of crew. Why is the cult in here?

Specialized Staff

When the round starts, review your medical staff and assigned jobs. Remember, Physicians, Surgeons, and First Responders are 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 kick them out for being useless because "they're a surgeon, not a doctor", then they need reeducating about what their job actually entails. If they decide to run out and do the First Responders job without getting told to, fire them explain to them the error of their ways.

Make sure that you have a dedicated First Responder team ready to respond to calls for medical assistance from outside of Medbay, someone manning the front desk staring thoughtlessly into the void to handle arrivals and minor cases, and someone - preferably everyone and some officers 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 except in case of emergency 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 three 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.

When everyone has their assignments, make sure that everybody has their medical belts stocked with the basic tools of the trade - brute kits, burn kits, inaprovaline, and things like that. Physicians and First Responders should carry more than most, and should have a variety of medkits available for unusual cases, since they're the First Responders and may have to deal with anything.

Chemical Fixes

Once your main staff is set up, contact the Pharmacy and get them to start making medicines for your doctors. Butazoline, dermaline, dexalin Plus, mortaphenyl, and alkysine are considered the basics, so have those mixed up as soon as possible, and make sure that your doctors know that they're available and where to find them. Once you have all of the basic medicines, have the Pharmacy mix up a little bit of everything and stock up on the important stuff, or do all the work yourself decide to have a shift without every chemical known to man prepared an hour before the time police arrives.

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 First Responders 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. It's also a good idea to ask for an exosuit from Operations, preferably with two mounted Sleepers. Make sure that your First Responders know how to operate it; an exosuit can save a lot of lives and make it possible for your First Responders to answer calls that they would normally be unable to due to its armour and internals.

Premium Hypospray

This is your medical tool, your lifeline should you have a pharmacist. It's an instant injector (dealing bursts of 5 units, with a fill limit of 30 units), which may be useful to the First Responders should you let one have it. You need to get rid of the chemicals inside before you can fill it with different medicine, which can be done by using the sink, or make your own mixes inside of the hypospray on the fly. It's considered very bad form to just go around injecting people without any RP however.

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, 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 with popped lungs. You will also be required to try to explain why people are going crazy, or returning from the dead. Good luck with that one.