Medical Doctor

MEDICAL STAFF
Medical Doctor	Access: Medbay, Morgue, Surgery, Mineral Storage Additional Access: Chemistry Lab, Virology Difficulty: Medium 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, Guide to Traumas Quote: Oh, are you hurt? Here, let me kiss it better...

You are the Medical Doctor. Your job is to ensure the crew stays healthy and alive, healing the wounded and reviving the dead. Needless to say, your work is cut out for you, but don't despair! You can still help people! Mostly.

Bare minimum requirements: If injured people will let you heal them instead of breaking into Medical Storage, do so.

Medbay

Doctor, Doctor!

When you are a Medical Doctor, your job is to heal people, save them from the brink of death, and revive the dead. You can diagnose injuries and diseases with the help of a health analyzer or even your PDA.

Much of the information on this page is dedicated to the basics of Medbay and the most prudent tips for beginning doctors. It's highly recommended that you read the Guide to medicine for full details on how health and bodies work in SS13, and the more advanced methods of restoring your patients.

Gearing Up

Unsurprisingly, the first thing you should do upon spawning in as a Medical Doctor is explore Medbay, collect the tools you'll need to do the job, and familiarize yourself with the layout of whatever station you're on. There's a lot of goodies to go through, but once you get the hang of things, it's not too hard to equip yourself.

The first thing to note is the medical techfab, usually located in the storage room. You can use it to produce various useful medical items, provided the miners are keeping the station's supplies up. If the Science department is doing their jobs, you'll also be able to print upgraded versions of many medical items once the appropriate research is done, so be sure to check back frequently.

The health analyzer allows you to diagnose your patients, and you'll find an analyzer in the white medkit you spawn with. Simply hit somebody with it, and you'll get a readout telling you what's wrong with them. Using it in-hand toggles reagent scan mode, which instead tells you what chemicals their bodies contain. You should always have one of these on hand; later on, you might be able to upgrade to an advanced health analyzer, which gives even more information.

Three pieces of clothing to collect are the medical HUD glasses, nitrile gloves and medical belt. The glasses allow you to see health bars above living creatures, instantly cluing you in on who's wounded; if the small icon next to them shows a face, they have a disease. The angrier the face looks, the worse the illness. The gloves drastically speed up the time needed to pick somebody up and carry them, essential for moving wounded people without them losing all their blood, and the belt can hold up to seven medical items for convenience. You can find all of these in a medical doctor's locker, usually in the storage room.

Health kits contain a variety of items and medicine. The white medkits contain general use items, whereas the colored ones correspond to damage types. Green is toxin damage, orange is burn damage, pink is brute damage and blue is suffocation damage. Even if you don't know which chemicals do what, you can rely on the contents of these kits to heal a specific damage type from your patients. As a rule of thumb, don't dump the whole kit into one person: at most, one syringe, patch or pill at a time is a good bet.

Surgical tools are needed for, well, surgery. The basic tools are the drapes, hemostat, cautery, retractor, scalpel, saw and drill. The white medkit you spawn with contains half of them, specifically the ones needed to perform the basic 'tend wounds' surgery. You can find the rest in the operating rooms, or print them from the lathe. With the right research, you can also print advanced tools that combine the functions of two tools into one.

Medipens are single-use items that come preloaded with useful chemicals. In particular, the epinephrine medipen contains epinephrine, which stabilizes patients at critical health, and formaldehyde, which stops organs from rotting if injected into a corpse and generally makes revival a lot easier. Sutures and regenerative meshes can be used on people to quickly heal brute and burn damage, respectively, making them ideal for quickly patching up minor wounds. Medical gauze is used to stop bleeding in patients.

The syringe gun is a tool that can be loaded with a syringe, and used to instantly inject people from a distance with a chemical. In theory, they can be used for doctoring to quickly inject someone with a syringe full of medicine at a distance. In practice, people fill bluespace syringes with lethal doses of poisonous chemicals and use the syringe guns as self defense or murder weapons. The rapid syringe gun can be researched and printed from the lathe, and holds 6 syringes.

Defibrillators are used to bring people back to life, provided their bodies are in good enough shape. In order to use one, you must equip it in your back slot, dual wield its paddles, and target the chest of the body you're trying to revive. With research, the lathe can print off wall mounts for defibs, and later even compact defibrillators that use your belt slot instead.

The stasis bed is an incredibly powerful piece of machinery. When someone is buckled into it, they enter stasis, which essentially freezes their vitals; they won't lose health or blood, but they also won't process any chemicals in their bodies. Buckling someone to a stasis bed while you work on them is highly recommended, but Medbay typically has a limited supply of them.

Operating tables are the designated location for performing surgery, but it's the operating computer that makes the magic happen. As Science researches better operating procedures, you can synchronize the computer to download those procedures' data, and any operating table (or stasis bed!) adjacent to an operating computer is "upgraded" to unlock those procedures for patients buckled to them. Make sure to keep your computers updated, and you'll be able to perform much better surgical procedures.

The cryo tubes can be used to heal various damage types with the power of coldness. Provided the cryo tubes are set up correctly, placing someone into a tube will cause them to gradually heal. This is the main method of healing cellular damage. To set up the tubes, simply insert the nearby beakers of cryoxodone (blue), use a wrench on the oxygen tanks, and make sure the freezer is turned on and set to its minimum temperature. You can put different chemicals in the tubes, but the default cryoxodone will suffice if nobody makes anything better.

IV drips are used to quickly inject blood or chemicals into a patient. To use them, fill a beaker or blood bag with the appropriate chemical, attach it to the drip, and then drag the drip onto a patient. If the drip is empty, you can also toggle it between injecting blood or draining blood.

There are a number of other items and machines in Medbay, but this list encompasses many of the most crucial ones you'll need as a doctor.

The First Patient

So you've gotten yourself geared up, and somebody comes running into Medbay, either wounded or carrying a dead body. What do?

Stubbed Toe, Call Shuttle

If the patient is alive, things are definitely easier. If the only thing they're suffering is basic damage, simply give them the appropriate treatment. Handing them sutures or a regenerative mesh is enough for brute or burn damage, and if you don't have any left, either fetch a pink/orange medkit or bother Chemistry for an appropriate medicine. Raw toxin or suffocation damage can be a bit trickier, but if there's nothing else wrong with them, just use the proper colored medkit.

Of course, there are plenty of other complications.

Serious basic damage: If someone is close to crit due to brute or burn damage (nearing 100), it may be more expedient to use the 'tend wounds' surgeries to fix them. Buckle them to a bed, strip off any exosuits or jumpsuits they might be wearing, begin the operation by targeting their chest and using the surgical drapes on them, make an incision with your scalpel, then apply hemostat until they're better.

Critical status: A patient with over 100 damage in any category will be in crit, typically crawling around and likely unable to speak properly. If any stasis beds are available, immediately try to buckle them in to stop any further degradation; if not, inject them with epinephrine to stabilize them as you work. Tend wound surgery is again the best non-chemical way to heal brute or burn damage, and clicking on them with help intent allows you to perform CPR to alleviate suffocation damage over 100. Be sure to use gauze if they're bleeding, and once they're out of critical, continue to patch them up as best you can. Finally, a patient suffering from many types of damage but still alive is best suited for cryo tube healing.

Organ damage: Unless an organ is "severely damaged" or "nonfunctional" on your health analyzer, they should hopefully heal on their own. If not, you'll most likely have to perform surgery on them to replace it. The medical autolathe can print off cybernetic replacements for many organs, so buckle your patient into a bed and start reading about surgery. This also applies to appendicitis, except you don't have to replace it; just take it out of them.

Disease: If someone is diseased, your health analyzer will tell you the cure. If the disease is randomly occurring, the patient likely won't be in much trouble, and you can ask Chemistry for the cure or try to get it yourself. If the disease was engineered by a rogue Virologist or is sentient, you may want to begin panicking and isolating the victims. If the disease is beneficial, and your health HUD glasses show a blue smiley face, you should instead encourage people to spread it, either by making pills from infected blood or injecting the blood directly.

Missing limbs: Like with organ damage, you may have to reattach limbs. If the patient has lost the original limbs, go bother Robotics for a cyborg limb to replace it with. Attaching limbs is another form of surgery, but be careful attaching heavily damaged organic limbs: if a patient is healthy but the limb you attach is severely damaged, their overall health will plummet upon attachment as the health totals of their body and limb combine!

Radiation: If someone comes into Medbay highly irradiated, they'll be suffering toxic damage, and likely spread the contamination to everything around them. The first thing to do is call them a complete fucking idiot for irradiating Medbay; the second is to get them some petenic acid. If there's none made and you don't know how to make it yourself, put them under a shower and pray someone more competent takes over.

Blood loss: Patients suffering blood loss are often signified by gasping, blacking out, and the long trail of lost blood behind them as they're dragged into Medbay. First and foremost, don't drag bleeding patients! Either grab them aggressively (yellow intent) and drag them onto you to carry them, or buckle them to a roller bed for transport. Secondly, find them an appropriate source of blood, typically injected via IV drip. You can also feed them iron, use saline-glucose solution instead of proper blood in an emergency, and combine a sample of their own blood with unstable mutagen. Don't inject them with an incompatible blood type, or they'll take toxin damage!

Cellular damage: The best way to cure cellular damage is the cryo tubes. Make sure nobody's put any insidious chemicals into the tubes, then open them up, drag your patient onto them, close the tube, and turn them on. If the tubes are set to auto, they'll be ejected once healthy.

Brain damage: If someone is suffering from brain damage, they'll likely have one or more crippling disorders, ranging from an inability to speak properly to constant spastic fits. Your analyzer will detect brain damage, and you can fix the lesser forms of it through surgery. Buckle them to a bed, target the head, choose Brain Surgery, and follow the appropriate steps, making sure to use a cautery to seal them up afters. Note that it's possible to fail "fixing the brain", but keep trying.

Augmentation: This isn't really a health problem, but people might ask you to augment them via surgery. This can come in the form of either implants, such as putting an inbuilt toolset into someone's arm, and replacements, such as taking someone's eyeballs out and replacing them with cool cyborg eyes that can see in the dark. At the end of the day, it's all surgery, so read up how to do it there.

Raising The Dead

If a patient has died, they can still be revived using a defibrillator, but only if they meet the proper requirements.

First, although not strictly required, examine your patient. If their description mentions that "their soul is departed", the player controlling them has willingly given up the ability to be revived, and if you bring them back to life, they'll be catatonic. You can still revive them if you feel like it, but there's no real point to doing so, so toss them in the morgue. Likewise, if a patient committed suicide, nothing you do will ever revive them.

Secondly, the patient's heart must be functional. Use your health analyzer to check their organs; if the heart works, either buckle them to a stasis bed to stop further organ decay, or inject formaldehyde (there's some in your epinephrine medipens) to do the same if there's no beds open. If the heart doesn't work, you can either replace it with a new one (cybernetic hearts can be printed from the lathe), or use the Coronary Bypass surgery to bring the heart back to barely-working state. You may also want to replace any other severely damaged organs, since they all have severe penalties for not working once the patient is alive again. If the patient is of a race without hearts (plasmamen), you'll have to implant one to defib them.

Thirdly, the brain must also be functional and present. If the brain is too damaged, you'll have to surgically cut it out, pour a beaker of mannitol on it to heal it, then insert it back into the patient.

Finally, the patient must not have a critical amount of brute or burn damage. Because dead corpses don't process chemicals, you'll have to use the Tend Wounds surgery to repair their bodies. This is relatively painless, and is done the same way as you'd heal a living patient.

If the patient's soul is present, their brain and heart work and their body is fixed up, you're ready to try the defibrillator. To use a normal bulky defibrillator, take off your backpack or satchel, put the defib on your back and click it, get your other hand free and activate the paddles to wield them in both hands, then click on the patient while targeting their chest. If the patient is wearing a thick suit like a space suit or firesuit you need to strip it off as well. STOP DRAGGING the patient, if you are, to prevent yourself from being shocked as well.

If all these factors are met, then the patient will come back to life! However, this doesn't mean they can just get right back up. They'll most likely still be in critical condition due to suffocation damage, so start performing CPR to stabilize them and bring them back below 100 oxyloss damage. You should also check their blood level and brain damage, but generally speaking, once your patient is back alive and in a stasis bed the worst is past.

In a worst case scenario, there are other means to bring players back into a round. Roboticists can turn brains into cyborgs, and Botanists can turn them into podpeople.

Alas Poor Yorick

If a "patient" is reduced to merely a head, you'll have to get creative. The best way to handle this is to simply put the head or brain on a new, healthy body.

To get said bodies, you can bother Genetics or Xenobiology for a monkey, inject it with mutadone to turn it into a human, and then begin operating. If you're using the brain, cut it out of the dead guy's head, pour a beaker of mannitol on it, cut out your healthy body's brain, jam the old brain in, and start working to defibrillate. You can also amputate the new body's head and attach the old one through surgery, but make sure the brain is still good!

Medibots

Medibots can be invaluable helpers for a medical staff. These helpful little bots can be built by Robotics, and automatically perform the Tend Wounds surgery on wounded people who come across them.

By opening them up with a free hand, you can set them to patrol the station, remain in one place, and even synchronize them to the research department to upgrade their healing abilities. Be wary of emagged medibots, however, as they'll instead pump their "patients" with deadly toxins!

No Respect

You will, inevitably, have invaders. It's not your job to fight people but it's up to you if you want to try to defend your department from random people breaking in to steal things. If you're stressed it may be better to just look the other way and let someone else handle it, or call security. Your best defense is your coworkers - with up to 5 Medical Doctors, the CMO, Virologist, two Chemists 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.

Sometimes it may be necessary to shoot someone with some morphine (don't overdose!).

Tips

• The medical belt can store all surgery tools.
• You can cut bedsheets with a scalpel or wirecutter and use the resulting cloth to craft a chemistry bag .
• Bedsheets work as drapes for surgery.
• If you implant a guy with a flashlight, he can still use it as a flashlight, and even toggle it.
• Raw carrots heal eye damage.
• You can use a health analyzer on a body to see the time of death.
• Star-Kist is just cola with orange juice. Thus will metabolize a bit faster and can be used as a very poor man's medicine to speed up CPR.
• Cryo won't work on you if you have cold resistance:
  • Insulating items like hardsuits, ins. gloves, gasmask, firesuits - they all slow down cryo or even stop it from working entirely.
  • If the patient in question has cold resistance, you may want to try go old-school and actually apply some medicine yourself, lazy bum.
  • That is, of course, if there's only cryoxadone in the tubes, since those need cold body temperatures to work.
• Wearing earmuffs will heal ear damage.
• Wearing a blindfold will heal eye damage.
• Attach a stethoscope on your neck slot and it'll make you look like you know what you're doing.
• Showers (wrenched to be cold) work just as well as cryo, as long as you have the drugs in your system.
• People with hardsuits on cannot be defibbed.

Tips for Traitoring

• The stethoscope can be used to break into the safe.
• You can replace the cryoxadone in cryo tubes with acid, so instead of healing people cryo will melt them to death.
• The syringe gun is one of the most lethal weapons on the station. A simple 15 unit lexorin syringe will kill unless the victim receives medical care. Anyone with a thick suit will block syringes though.

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 poisons, take them some place private in or near 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.

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.

Jobs on /tg/station
	Command	Captain, Head of Personnel, Head of Security, Chief Engineer, Research Director, Chief Medical Officer, Quartermaster, Bridge Assistant
	Security	Head of Security, Security Officer, Warden, Detective, Veteran Security Advisor, Prisoner
	Engineering	Chief Engineer, Station Engineer, Atmospheric Technician
	Science	Research Director, Geneticist, Scientist, Roboticist
	Medical	Chief Medical Officer, Medical Doctor, Paramedic, Chemist, Coroner
	Supply	Quartermaster, Cargo Technician, Shaft Miner, Bitrunner, Cargorilla
	Service	Head of Personnel, Janitor, Bartender, Cook, Botanist, Clown, Mime, Chaplain, Curator, Assistant, Lawyer, Psychologist
	Non-human	AI, Human AI, Cyborg, Positronic Brain, Drone, Personal AI, Construct, Imaginary Friend, Split Personality, Ghost
	Antagonists	Traitor, Malfunctioning AI, Changeling, Nuclear Operative, Blood Cultist, Heretic, Spy, Revolutionary, Wizard, Family, Blob, Abductor, Holoparasite, Xenomorph, Spider, Revenant, Morph, Nightmare, Space Ninja, Slaughter Demon, Pirate, Sentient Disease, Obsessed, Fugitives, Hunters, Space Dragon, Elite Mobs, Sentient Slime, Regal Rat, Paradox Clone
	Special	CentCom Official, Death Squad Officer, Emergency Response Officer, Chrono Legionnaire, Highlander, Ian, Lavaland or Space Role, CentCom Intern