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.
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
Damage
Most of a patient's patient's wounds are represented as numerical damage values which comes in 4 primary kinds and 3 secondary kinds. Brute, Burn, Toxin, and Oxygen encompass the four main types of damage that are easily detected on a health analyzer. Organ, Radiation, and Genetic damage are much harder to detect and simple health analyzers might only detect that something is wrong while more advanced ones might give more details. Additionally, brute and burn damage exists on specific body parts and organ damage effects specific organs, while other damage types exist in the body as a whole. As these damage types increase the patient's health drops in proportion. In addition to 'regular damage' there are a myriad of injuries and "status effects" which a patient can suffer, ranging from broken bones to blindness to gangrenous infections in limbs.
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.