In its current state, medical is without a doubt one of the most shallow and unrewarding departments to play. In real life (and no, I'm not arguing on the grounds of "muh realism), medicine is complicated as fuck and requires time and effort to get right. People have also complained about a lack of lethality, and that can be addressed here. Medical's problems are as follows:
- "Fire and forget" nature: Currently, all people (not necessarily even doctors) do is dump someone in either a sleeper or a cryotube and push a button. Any idiot can do that, and most of the time it's not even the MDs. "Fire and forget" was one of the big rationales behind moving to the supermatter engine, and
- Lack of consequences: All injuries do is make you move slower. If you survive the initial incident, you will almost always live.
- No presence: Nobody cares about medbay. Medkits are the entire department in the part. Nobody gives a shit when medbay is blown up.
- Unused systems: We have a great surgery system, a dedicated operating theater in medbay, and yet it's never used. Why!?
- New damage type: Laceration damage I suggested this in the past, but I think that it's worth bringing up again. Deep cuts should be differentiated from bruising. Knives and other sharp objects cause this type of damage, and it causes much more bleeding than brute damage. The bleeding can be halted by using a surgical stitching kit, and the wound can be healed with synthflesh patches.
- Make severe wounds require surgery: Severe wounds like gunshot wounds should require more than slapping some patches on. Deep cuts should require stitching (1-2 step surgery, can be self-performed albeit slower), bullets should have a chance to embed (would require surgery to remove), excessive toxin damage should cause organ failure that requires transplants, etc. Could add additional surgical tools, depends on how deep we would want to go.
- Rework/remove sleepers and cryotubes: Sleepers cut out almost all of the work required for medbay to function and render chemistry borderline useless. Put them behind high-level R&D. Cryotubes shouldn't heal. Instead, they should serve to keep critical patients in suspended animation until treatment is available. Basically life-support.
- REMOVE MEDKITS :This is probably the most controversial change I'm proposing, but in my opinion is the most essential. Currently, if you have a medkit, medbay is completely unnecessary. Medkits should only contain gauze, emergency suture kits, and epipens.
- Remove bruise packs and ointments: As it stands, you can burn nearly to death and fix yourself with some drug store burn ointment. This is stupid. Those types of wounds should require attention from an actual doctor. Chemistry should be responsible for manufacturing drugs. They're under medical and not science for a reason. Medbay can have a few pre-made chemical patches lying around to tide them over until chemistry is up and running.