Guide to medicine

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Chief Medical Officer Kingston says:
"Doctor! I need you to tear out that man's appendix, throw that clown out of medical, and stitch up that librarian's face!"

Medical care is serious business, and going halfway with your medical treatment can result in someone dying... or worse. Make sure you know what you're doing before you try to fix someone up!

If you're going to treat someone, you're going to have to know what tools you need, how to identify injuries, what machinery and facilities you must use, and how to keep people from dying while in treatment.

Identification

First of all, grab a Health Scanner HUD from the medical storage and wear it. It shows the patient's overall health condition and therefore shows you instantly who you should treat first from a group of patients. Identification is the first and foremost step in administering treatment. Here are ways to identify the type of injuries a person may have:

Seven types of damage

  • Humans can be hurt in seven different ways: Suffocation, brute, burn, toxin, cellular, brain damage and bleeding.
  • You want the patient to be as healthy as possible, so you have to heal all of these, and they have to be treated individually (unless you use a chemical which heals multiple damage types at once).
  • The overall health status (from 100% to -100%) is determined by adding these damages together, except brain damage. If there are 0 damages, the patient is perfectly healthy (100%).
  • If the patient has taken summarily 100 damage (except for bleeding), he will be in a critical condition (0%); lying on the ground, unresponsive and gasping for air. When in this condition, the patient cannot breathe on their own and will gradually take suffocation damage until death (-100%). This kills the patient.
  • Bleeding is different from the basic six types of damage. See below for a more extensive explanation.
  • You can identify these different damage types easily by using your PDA with the Med-U Cartridge inside and Health Scanning enabled, or a Health Analyzer on the patient. You can also examine the patient (shift-click), but it only shows basic information.
  • If a Health Analyzer or a PDA with a Med-U Cartridge is not available, observing the patient and their surroundings will help with diagnosis:
  • If there is a pile of vomit next to, or under the patient then they are most likely suffering from toxin damage.
  • If there is blood everywhere, blood on the person dying, or the patient has severe bruises, they are suffering from brute damage.
  • If the patient has black scars across their body and no blood, or the patient has severe burns, they have been severely burned.
  • If the patient is gasping, they are most likely suffocating.
  • If the patient keeps fainting, trails drips of blood as they walk or is unresponsive to other forms of "healing" they may be bleeding or be suffering from blood-loss
  • If the patient reports other symptoms such as headaches, coughing or vomiting blood, they most likely have a virus.

Your first patient

Your patient can arrive in two ways:

1. The patient walks in and needs treatment.

"PLS DOC HLEP!!" You can see the patient's overall health status with your Health Scanner HUD with just a glance, however this will only tell you how serious the situation is and how quickly you need to act.
How to act:
  • Use your PDA or a Health Analyzer on the patient to identify the damage type.
  • Proceed with the necessary treatment found in the next chapter.

2. The patient is dragged into Medbay and is in critical condition.

The patient is unresponsive to the environment, on the floor, and gasping for air.
How to act:
  • The first thing you should do is administer Epinephrine. Epinephrine stops the general decline of the critical patient's health, and helps treat wounds if the patient is in low to severe critical (but not if they're almost dead). Don't give them more than 30 units of it, as that will cause toxin damage.
  • If Epinephrine is not present, immediately perform CPR at least a few times to ensure the patient stays alive until you do the following step. Make sure they're also not suffering from any other major problems, like being on fire, or in a low pressure environment.
NOTE: CPR on it's own will not heal someone unless they are only suffering from suffocation damage. If they are in crit BECAUSE of burn/brute/toxins it will only keep them from dying. Remember to drag someone to the Medbay whilst administering CPR instead of sucking their face in the hallway for ten minutes like an idiot.
  • Now you have two options:
  1. Strip the patient's space suit off if they have one and put the patient into a cryochamber, wait for them to heal up and eject.
  2. Or (if you are a robust enough doctor) quickly identify the damage type and apply the needed treatment (found in next chapter), this is a much faster method but has its risks.

Triage

Triage is basically a priority system where you can identify who's in the worst condition and treat them as appropriate. As the table points out, people who are in critical condition should be treated before everyone else. The ones who are unable to scream have more priority than those who can scream.

Color Description In-game definition Real world treatment type Suggested in-game treatment
Black Patient is dead Patient is dead without hope of resuscitation Remove/place elsewhere to prevent infections Ignore until all patients from Red to Green are dealt with, then take to cloning/morgue.
Red Patient is seriously injured and in danger of dying, or just flatlined recently
  • Critical condition (vitals below 0)
  • Patient is losing blood
  • Quickly dropping vitals
  • Lethal disease in late stages
  • 'Died' less than 10 minutes ago and can be revived by defibrillator
Immediate treatment Treat their condition as soon as possible. If unable to treat immediately (OR busy, no vaccine), put them in cryo. Stabilize all critical patients before proceeding with in-depth treatment.
Yellow Patient is severely injured, but not in life-threatening danger
  • Vitals between 0 and 30%
  • Potentially lethal disease in its early stages
Delayed treatment Treat as soon as all red triage patients are stabilized.
Green Patient has light injuries Vitals between 30 and 80% Minimal treatment Ignore until the last of the yellow triage patients have been taken care of.
White Patient is uninjured Vitals between 80 and 100 Ignore/ask them to get out of the way to expedite treatment of patients. Ignore until all green and black triage patients have been taken care of.

Treatment

Suffocation

This is the first and most important to look out for. It is not visible on the body, but people suffering it will gasp for air. On the Health Analyzer, it is the leftmost, blue damage type.

Ways of getting damaged:

  • Being in an area without enough oxygen present will slowly suffocate you.
  • Once you are in critical condition, you can't breathe and will suffocate.
  • An Ephedrine overdose deals suffocation damage at 45u.
  • A Nicotine overdose deals suffocation damage at 35u.
  • A Histamine overdose deals suffocation damage at 30u.
  • An Omnizine overdose deals suffocation damage at 30u.
  • Cyanide deals very high amounts of suffocation damage.
  • Zombie powder deals some suffocation damage.

Treatment:

  • If a person is in crit, you can CPR them. Remove your and patient's masks and helmets, switch to help intent and click on them.
  • If a person is not in critical condition, and they have no bad chemicals in their bloodstream, placing them in an oxygen-filled area will suffice.
  • Epinephrine prevents the person from taking more than 35 suffocation damage, but does not treat it.
  • Salbutamol slowly treats suffocation damage. It also binds lexorin very quickly.
  • Perfluorodecalin instantly heals all suffocation damage.
  • Cryoxadone in a cryotube or a very cold environment heal most types of damage, including suffocation.
  • Orange juice isn't the most effective cure, but it does help a bit when no other options are available

Brute Damage

This is a straight-forward damage category. This is far right damage type on Health Analyzer. Brute wounds are visible, and limb specific.

Ways of getting damaged:

  • Being physically hit by almost anything is brute damage.
  • Some chemicals can deal brute damage.

Treatment:

  • Bruise packs can be applied to the damaged limb. Use a medical scanner or ask the patient to examine themselves.
  • Styptic powder and synthflesh heals brute damage instantly.
  • Bicaridine from a sleeper or chemistry heals brute damage over time. Do not administer more than 30u, however.
  • Saline-glucose solution heals brute slowly.
  • Cryoxadone in a cryotube or a very cold environment heal most types of damage, including brute.
  • Food can heal brute damage slowly.
  • Milk, bilk, soy milk, soy latte, cafe latte, and cream can heal it very slowly.
  • There are some job-specific ways of healing it: donuts heal security, bananas and banana juice heal clowns and monkeys, "nothing" in mime's bottle of nothing heals mimes.

Bleeding

After a limb sustains 30 brute damage, it will start bleeding.

IVs and gauze will temporarily provide relief from bleeding.

WARNING: Incorrect blood types are toxic to the patient, and will not replenish their blood!

Blood compatibility table (yes these work in real life as well)
Recipient Donor
O− O+ A− A+ B− B+ AB− AB+
O−
O+
A−
A+
B−
B+
AB−
AB+

Treating bloodloss:

  1. Bandage wound to stop bleeding.
  2. Locate brute damage.
  3. Treat brute damages above ~30 to halt bleeding.
  4. Assess blood levels, if low or critical, proceed with blood transfusion.
  5. If blood transfusion is unavailable, blood will be naturally produced by the body, albeit slowly.

Blood transfusion:

  1. Use medical scanner on patient to find blood type.
  2. Obtain blood pack from surgery, virology, or cargo.
  3. If no compatible blood packs are available, use a bottle of saline-glucose solution instead for the transfusion.
  4. Attach blood pack to IV drip.
  5. Ensure the drip is on 'give' blood and not 'take' blood by right-clicking it.
  6. Click-drag IV drip onto patient.
  7. Check up on patient's blood levels regularly, this process moves quickly.
  8. Detach patient from IV drip by click-dragging the IV drip onto the patient again or simply clicking the IV.
  9. Detach blood pack by clicking on the IV drip.

Blood donation:

  1. Attach empty blood pack to IV drip.
  2. Ensure IV drip is on "take" mode by right clicking it.
  3. Attach to a donor by click-dragging it onto the donor.
  4. Blood pack will automatically fill. alarm will sound if patient's blood levels reach critical.
  5. Detach IV drip by click-dragging it onto the donor again or simply clicking the IV.
  6. Click on IV drip to eject blood pack, label appropriately.

Burns

This is a straight-forward damage category. This is the damage type second to the right on Health Analyzer. Burns are visible, and limb specific.

Ways of getting damaged:

  • Temperature too high or too low causes burn damage. That includes coldness of space and being set on fire.
  • Lazers deal burn damage.
  • Thermite deals burn damage if taken internally, but it is a very rare case.
  • Electric shocks deal burn damage.

Treatment:

  • Ointments can be applied to the damaged limb. Use a medical scanner or ask the patient to examine themselves.
  • Silver sulfadiazine and synthflesh heal burn damage instantly.
  • Oxandrolone pills heal burn damage over time, and are more effective on severe burns.
  • Kelotane from a sleeper or chemistry will heal burn damage over time. Do not administer more than 30u to prevent overdoses.
  • Saline-glucose solution heals burn slowly.
  • Cryoxadone in a cryotube or a very cold environment heal most types of damage, including burn.
  • Tomato juice can heal it very slowly.
  • There are some job-specific ways of healing it: donuts heal security, bananas and banana juice heal clowns and monkeys, "nothing" in mime's bottle of nothing heals mimes.

Toxins

This is the second from the left on the Health Analyzer. It is not visible, and usually people will have no clue they are poisoned (unless they're vomiting profusely). Thankfully it is easy to treat.

Ways of getting damaged:

  • Breathing plasma deals toxic damage.
  • Many chemicals deal toxic damage.
  • Drinking a lot of alcohol deals toxic damage.
  • Synaptizine deals light toxic damage.
  • High doses of radiation deal toxic damage.

Treatment:

  • Mind the difference between chemical named "toxin" and toxic damage: the chemical deals toxic damage as long as it is present in bloodstream. Anti-toxins purge toxins and heal the damage. In extreme cases the person might be taking toxic damage faster than the anti-toxin can heal it! In these cases, you need to prioritise purging the toxic chemicals.
  • Anti-toxin (Charcoal) heals toxic damage and slowly purges toxic chemicals.
  • Pentetic acid heals toxic damage and purges toxins more quickly than charcoal, but deals some brute damage.
  • Calomel purges toxic chemicals more quickly than pentetic acid but doesn't heal toxic damage, and will deal toxic damage if the patient has 20 health or more.
  • Cryoxadone in a cryotube or a very cold environment heal most types of damage, including toxic.
  • Lime juice, tea, iced tea can slowly heal it.
  • Vomiting heals some toxic damage. You can't control it, though.

Cellular damage

Rare kind of damage. It shows up on scanners and is visible on examination but exact numbers aren't shown. Causes overall health status being lower.

Ways of getting damaged:

  • Slimes. They deal cellular damage when they feed on someone.
  • Cloned people will have cellular damage, unless the cloner is fully upgraded and the cloning was 100% complete.

Treatment:

  • Cryoxadone in a cryotube or a very cold environment heal most types of damage, including cellular.
  • Rezadone also heals cellular damage, and does not require cryotube, but hard to get.

Keep in mind that cellular damage is not related to genetic disabilities! They are different things, and must be treated separately!

Brain damage

Nasty, makes people say stupid things and clunk their heads into airlocks, along with blacking out and an inability to use machinery.

Ways of getting damaged:

Treatment:

Using Sleepers and Cryogenics

Sleeper

Sleepers are a very important part of the medbay. They allow you to inject various chemicals, and have unlimited stocks of them. Always use sleepers over pills, patches and especially bruise packs and ointments! They are mostly used by field medics, or when cryogenics treatment is not available. Keep in mind that when the patient's health is very low, sleepers become unusable, with the exception of epinephrine.

Sleepers also show you chemicals present in person's bloodstream.

Scientists can produce upgraded parts for sleepers. See here how upgrading will make your life much easier.

How to use:

  1. Ensure the sleeper is open. If it's not, open it.
  2. Pull the patient near the sleeper.
  3. Click and hold on the patient, move the cursor to the sleeper, then release. This puts the patient inside.
  4. Click on the sleeper to open the menu.
  5. Inject chemicals they need (note: these are the non-upgraded chemicals):
    • Epinephrine: Prevents further suffocation damage. Useful if someone is about to die.
    • Morphine: Puts person to sleep after some time.
    • Bicaridine: Heals brute damage slowly over time.
    • Kelotane: Heals burn damage slowly over time.
    • Salbutamol: Heals suffocation damage.
  6. It's not necessary to wait now, open the sleeper and kick them out.

Cryogenics Tube

Cryotube uses the fact that cryoxadone are extremely effective at healing all types of damage, but only work in cold environments. Use it when patient is in crit, and sleeper is not helping, when they have toxic damage and you're too lazy to get charcoal, or when they suffer from cellular damage.

Cryotubes can also be upgraded by science parts. Better matter bins allow them to work slightly faster and more efficiently.

How to prepare (This needs to be done at the start of every round!):

  1. Turn on the freezer. Set it to lowest temperature available.
  2. Load beakers with chemicals. A common and highly effective mix for general use is cryoxadone and mannitol.
  3. Set the tubes to Auto instead of Manual, so they'll open after the patient is healed, otherwise they'll be trapped in until someone opens the tube from outside.

How to use:

  1. Wrench one of the O2 canisters.
  2. Ensure the tube is open first. If not, open it.
  3. Pull the person next to the tube.
  4. Remove all clothes that prevent freezing, such as hardsuits.
  5. Click on them with your mouse and drag their sprite to the tube.
  6. Open the tube menu and turn it on. If their health starts to improve (sometimes it takes a moment to start), they're all set. If not, make sure everything is set up properly (cryoxadone in the tubes? pressure in the canisters?).
  7. When healing is complete, the tube will turn off and pop open automatically.
  8. Shake the person to get them up (switch to help intent and click on them)
  9. Let them redress (Or do it for them) then kick them out.
  10. Disconnect the O2 canister.

Rarer Cases

These situations are not as common as normal damages, but they are still VERY LIKELY to happen. AND most of these cases are also more severe, and it is essential to be fucking fast and know this stuff!
So read up, these are the things that will separate quacks from real doctors!

Overdose

Giving too much of some chemicals or drugs can cause an overdose. This mean that you aren't doing your job correctly and you may even kill the patient if you don't stop doing it!

Chemicals that can overdose:

  • Omnizine: 30u (Really deadly)
  • Salicyclic Acid 25u
  • Ephedrine 45u (Addiction at 30u)
  • Morphine 30u (Addiction at 25u)
  • Atropine 35u
  • Epinephrine 30u
  • Nicotine 35u (Addiction at 30u, not sure its achievable with normal cig use)
  • Crank 20u (Addiction at 10u, also really deadly)
  • Krokodil 20u (Addicted at 15u, addiction is what causes skin and bones minus skin)
  • Histamine 30u (This is what makes Histamines dangerous)

How to treat:

  • Charcoal purges chemicals slowly and can help with toxin damage.
  • Calomel purges chemicals quickly and is relatively easy to make in chemistry.
  • Pentetic acid clears all chemicals from the body very quickly, and can also be found in upgraded sleepers.

Disease

Diseases are the most frustrating thing you will deal with, as it spreads, and can infect you as well. A disease can be identified easily with the Health Scanner HUD, it giving a green-unhappy-face-icon next to the patient. PDA or a Health Analyzer will give more detailed information about the disease and its cure.

How to Treat:

  1. Suit up in anti-viral equipment.
  2. Isolate the patient from public areas (if they have an infectious disease).
  3. Use your Health Analyzer or PDA to see the cure to the disease (usually some basic chemical element).
  4. Administer the chemical element needed. OR if the virologist has made a vaccine, administering one unit of it will instantly cure and immunize.
  5. Monitor the patient's condition, do not leave them until they are clear and have become resistant to the disease.
  6. Check if you are infected after dealing with the patient.

After:

  • If you did not have the vaccine for the disease, take a blood sample from the cured patient and hand it to the virologist to help him/her make a vaccine.

If you half ass curing people, the disease may return and kill the person. And they can get infected if they are cloned as well!

Blindness

The person cannot see, they usually will scream about this endlessly.

How to treat:

Deafness

The person cannot hear, they are usually unresponsive to verbal communication and can't even hear themselves talking.

What causes it:

  • Genetic mutations can cause genetic deafness.
  • Ear damage can render a person deaf temporarily, but extreme ear damage causes permanent deafness.
  • Explosions cause ear damage.
  • Flashbangs cause ear damage.

How to treat:

  • Most ear damage will heal on its own.
  • Inacusiate heals minor ear damage instantly.
  • Put earmuffs on the patient and minor ear damage will quickly heal.
  • Mutadone can reset genetic mutations including deafness.

Genetic Disabilities

Disabilities cannot be cured by normal medical tools.

How to treat:

  • Ask a competent geneticist for a clean SE injector.
  • A one unit mutadone pill or injection will also instantly cure all genetic abnormalities. This includes beneficial ones.

Radiation

Rarely you will treat this, it causes people to black out all the time and take steady toxin damage. It either comes from space radiation surges, after which crew members will "feel strange" and begin to vomit, but more likely you'll be treating engineers who got too close to the singularity or geneticists and people undergoing genetics testing who've stuck themselves with too many SE injectors.

How to treat:

  • If you have potassium iodide or pentetic acid, use them. These will remove the radiation before it poisons the patient further.
  • Else, treat with charcoal (Anti-toxin) until the radiation levels have subsided.

Hallucinations

This nasty effect causes the victim to see (usually deadly) objects in his and others' hands, along with random visions of people and creatures attacking him, causing stamina damage. Extremely unpleasant. Caused by changelings, mindbreaker toxin, and some bad 'shrooms.

How to treat:

  • Charcoal (Anti-toxin) helps hallucinations wear off faster.
  • Synaptizine Is twice as good for removing hallucinations. But can cause light toxin damage. Administering alongside anti-toxin will treat the patient faster and counteract the negative side effect of Synaptizine.

Death

Whether the patient was already dead when they were dragged into medbay or they died under your care, the basic procedure for handling stiffs is the same. Your first plan of action should be trying to defibrillate the body and bring them back to life without making them wait for the cloning process. This may look long and complicated, but it's actually pretty simple and most of the time you can just defib a dead person right away without any prior preparation.

  1. Inspect the body. Does it say they committed suicide or that their soul has departed? Nothing you can do for them, fast track them to the morgue.
  2. If they're just normal dead, scan them with a health analyzer. Do they have more than 180 brute or burn damage (tracked separately, having 179 of each is fine)? If so, you can't defib them. Corpses do not react with reagents, and thus cannot be healed. Bring them to cloning.
  3. If they're defibbable, check their toxins damage. If they have a significant amount of damage and tons of poisons in them, either hit them with a shot of your preferred antitoxin (most likely Charcoal) before defibbing them so that it takes effect as soon as you revive them, or if it's too serious, consider just having them clone.
  4. Once the patient is fully prepared, equip your defib (the large, bulky ones go on your back slot where your backpack usually goes, and the compact defib that the CMO gets goes on your belt), empty both of your hands, and click on the defib in your equipment slot to take out the paddles. Click on the paddles with the hand you're holding them in to wield them in both hands, switch to help intent, target the chest, and then use them on the patient. In a few seconds, you'll deliver an electric shock (unless they're wearing a space suit or something like that, in which case, strip it off) and the defib will tell you one of a few things
  5. If the defib pings and says the resuscitation was successful, pat yourself on the back and get them all patched up. If it says they have severe tissue damage, they have more than 180 brute or burn damage, and are not eligible for defibbing. If it says the heart tissue has decayed beyond saving, sigh and shake your head sadly, and drag them off to cloning. If it says there's no soul in the body, wait a few seconds for the ghost of the player come back to their body, and shock them again. If you still don't get a response, try it one more time. Usually three shocks is enough of a window for anyone who wants to get defibbed to get back in their body, but if you have the time, shock them a fourth or even a fifth time. If you still get no love, take them to genetics, and give them one last shot, sometimes people will respond to the cloning. Otherwise if they're still getting a mental interface error, dump them in the morgue.

If the cloner was blown up or Genetics is for some other reason inaccessible, you can also clone people in Hydroponics:

  1. You must take a blood sample of the corpse to be injected into a pack of Replica Pod seeds, and then plant them.
  2. This option creates perfect (though sometimes plant-like) human clones.

If the patient is a plasmaman, try defibrillating them before following these steps:

  • Do not attempt to clone the plasmaman, unless you are using a cloner in a room full of plasma with no oxygen.
    • If you happen to have such a cloner, clone the plasmaman and forget the rest of this guide!

You can't clone a plasmaman, but you can take out its brain and put it into something that can be cloned.

  1. Put the plasmaman's in a bodybag and move it to a low-traffic part of the medbay.
  2. Remove the plasmaman's items except the jumpsuit and helmet.
  3. Perform brain removal surgery on the plasmaman.
  4. Get a monkey and turn it into a human.
  5. Perform brain removal surgery on the monkeyman.
  6. Insert the plasmaman's brain in the monkeyman.
  7. Clone or defib the monkeyman.

PLEASE NOTE In the morgue there are lights on the side of the trays. the red light means there is a dead body with no ghost occupying it. Green light means there is a body with a ghost in it, which means you should clone it, or risk being bitched at in dead chat, or maybe MAYBE a jobban. Do us all a favor and READ THE LIGHTS ON THE MORGUE TRAYS

Cheat Sheet for the Lazy Efficient Doctor

If you don't want to remember all of those things above, just look at this cheat sheet whenever a patient comes in and you'll be an excellent doctor in most (>90%) cases.

Afternote

If you aren't serious about healing someone, don't give up halfway, get proper medical staff to help them. Don't leave them in Genetics to just die either (this wastes everyone else's time, except yours, you selfish fuck), at least try to have a doctor save them.