User:Ozyton

Welcome to the wonderful and frankly daunting world of medicine! Playing medical is potentially the most dynamic job on the station with a lot of moving parts and generally higher expectation from crewmates for you to be able to do the task competently. It's easy to understand why people may wish to shy away from medical jobs, but for those who wish to put the effort in it can be extremely rewarding. This guide aims to be the jumping off point for those wishing to get started on their medical careers in Virgo, with more in-depth guides serving to expand your knowledge on the systems when you are prepared for it. The guides here will mostly be focusing on the mechanical side of things, but having good bedside manner is encouraged.

Is medical right for you?

Before we begin there are a few things to get out of the way. First and foremost if your only goal is to play Nurse Goodbody in a sexy uniform for your lewd scenes but don't want to actually treat patients then you should not choose medical. Treating patients is the primary task of the job. If you are only signing up to realize your personal kinks with no interest in actually doing the job then you are going to be seen as a liability and may even get you job-banned. With that said It is entirely fine to play the 'sexy nurse' as long as you're willing to perform job tasks when necessary.

It's also important to realize that in situations where medical is understaffed and you are left to deal with a crisis by yourself then it can become stressful. Even when you are off doing your scenes it is often expected for you to be able to pause said scenes at a moment's notice to deal with a situation. Ideally medical will have enough staff that it's fine for you to go off-duty and enjoy yourself, just know that ideal situations are not always guaranteed.

Additionally, do not choose medical if you are hoping to eat corpses or casualties. While Virgo does have healbelly functionality it is intended to be a scene tool, not as an alternative to actual treatment. Furthermore the resleever can be used as a 'prey printer' but this should really only occur with OOCly consenting parties and should not interfere with regular resleeving duties..

With that disclaimer out of the way, let's move on to the basics.

Understanding damage and health

Virgo is at its core a video game, so while damage is more nuanced than a simple healthbar it is still largely based on numbers. To grossly oversimplify things. healing patients is essentially removing high damage numbers and removing negative status effects. With that said it's encouraged to add in some roleplay to make things more believable and to add flavor, otherwise you are just there fixing numbers. You may even make a patient's visit to the medbay a memorable one if you're good at making it interesting. Of course the patient may also not care and just want to be healed so they can get back to sitting AFK in the bar, and that's fine too but obviously less interesting. In many cases damage is relatively forgiving in Virgo to help facilitate roleplay. Don't be afraid to talk when you need to, especially with other doctors who are trying to help. Try not to rush unless the situation requires action RIGHT NOW to prevent a lost patient!

Health

Crew members by default have 100 hit points. This number may be different depending on their species or traits. Once someone accumulates enough damage to reach 0 health they will go into critical condition, and at -100 health they will become deceased. If you have access to AR vision either by using AR glasses or a NIF then you will be able to see a health bar above people's heads that indicates their overall health. Note that this health bar does not take into account effects such as radiation poisoning or bleeding, it is only representative of someone having accumulated one of the four primary types of damage.

• No Healthbar: 100% Health
• Green: 99 to 78% Health
• Yellow: 71 to 42% Health
• Red: 21 to 1% Health
• Red, Flashing: 0 to -40% Health
• Critical!: -50 to -85% Health
• Dead: -100% Health and below

Area Damage

The 'overall health' described earlier is the sum of all the damage on each part of the body. All body parts and even internal organs can be damaged individually, each conferring negative effects depending on what part is damaged and how badly. It is possible for someone to go into critical condition or even die from smaller wounds all over their body, or from especially grievous wounds concentrated in one spot. If a single body part takes enough damage it can fail or outright be destroyed or separated from the body depending on what kind of damage it takes. When treating a patient it is important to know where on (or in) their body their wounds are, otherwise you could end up performing surgery on their chest when trying to fix a broken bone located in their left leg.

Death

Death occurs when a patient has taken enough overall damage to reduce their health to -100%. It is possible for patients to accumulate damage that sends them below -100% health, however once the patient is dead they do not become super-dead with more damage (except for husking which is a special case, but still recoverable). The main differences between a patient who is alive (above -99% damage) and dead (-100% damage or below), aside from the obvious, is that living patients are able to metabolize reagents and chemicals in their bloodstream and stomach while dead patients cannot.

Once someone dies they do not become a lost cause, it is still possible to revive them! Upon death a 60 minute timer will begin, during which if their damage is raised below -100% they can be resuscitated. It is recommended to resuscitate as soon as possible, which means the patient may still be heavily injured. Be sure to have the appropriate anesthetics or painkillers available.

Damage

Any of the 4 primary damage types that lower a patient's overall hit points is simply referred to as damage, and these damage types show up on a health analyzer as color coded values. People can accumulate other types of damage that require special treatment, which will be covered later. They can also gain negative status effects, which this guide will refer to as injuries.

Brute damage encompasses everything from blunt force trauma to gunshot wounds to stab wounds. Brute can typically be treated with simple gauze bandages or advanced trauma kits, however severe brute damage can lead to more alarming injuries such as fractured bones and hemorrhaging (bleeding). Hemorrhages are especially dangerous since the loss of blood can cause compounding negative effects until death. This is especially bad when considering hemorrhages can occur beneath the dermis, known as internal bleeding or IB, which gauze or trauma kits cannot immediately treat.

Burn damage typically occurs when a victim is electrocuted or is shot with energy weapons, but being lit on fire is also possible but less common. While burns won't cause broken bones or hemorrhaging they come with their own nasty effects. For starters, burns are much, much more likely to become infected than brute injuries. Additionally, a victim exposed to fire for a long enough period of time can become husked and require special procedures to reconstruct their bodies.

Toxin damage can originate from eating poisoned food, untreated wounds becoming infected, radiation or phoron poisoning, or even liver failure, among many other sources. Toxin damage is actually fairly easy to treat and is often a side effect of something much more dangerous such as organ failure or infections.

Oxygen damage, more accurately called hypoxia, occurs when for one reason or another the patient isn't receiving oxygen to vital organs. This can be caused by the patient not being able to breathe, or from having lost a large volume of blood. As with toxin damage, hypoxia is most likely a symptom of some major life threatening injury.