Guide to Medical
Starting your shift
Medbay often starts out calm, but you'd best prepare for the storm that's about to come. You'll either get blown up by some syndicate agent wanting the hypospray or something similar, or you'll get so inundated with bodies and people screaming in your ear for you to treat them faster that you'll blow medbay up yourself.
Coordinate with the chemists. Give them a laundry list of drugs you'll need to treat your patients. Try to have a variety of meds on deck, and don't just keep a stockpile of Tricordrazine for everyone that comes your way.
It's optional but bringing a few Health Scanners out to the front of medbay for patients to come and scan their damage without pestering you can be beneficial.
On station, there will frequently be a front desk where a Crew Monitoring console is placed. You can also find one at the Paramedic's office. When you have the time, you can check the Crew Monitor for anyone dead, critical, or otherwise in bad condition. A Handheld Crew Monitor device can also help you locate them when you're out and about.
Dead Bodies and Morgue
If someone dies in your care or is brought to you as a corpse, before you decide to stuff them in the morgue, verify that the body has a soul. The best and simplest way to do this is ⇧ Shift + left click.
(Images outdated except the last one)
If you see text in yellow stating "His/her soul has departed and moved on. Any recovery is unlikely.", then this person is gone. They've either committed suicide, or they've taken a ghost role, and thus forfeited the right to come back to their body. That or they've just been cloned. Toss this body in the morgue. Alternatively, if someone has disconnected from the round while still being alive, they will receive a variant of this text stating something along the lines of "being unresponsive with a distant stare."
There is a third possibility, of there being purple text, stating "He/She is totally catatonic. The stresses of life deep in space must have been too much for him/her. Any recovery is unlikely." This player ghosted while alive, meaning they forfeited the ability to go back into their body. While on LRP you have the rights to do whatever with their body, on MRP, it is usually frowned upon and considered illegal to start robbing or gibbing a catatonic person.
If a patient cannot be revived, through the unrevivable trait or decomposition,
put their body in a morgue (or at least a body bag) before it starts rotting further and producing miasma. Not only is this for sanitary purposes, it will also deter thieves and will prevent any other medical personnel attempting to treat them. The morgue beds will also show the status of a soul inside the body. Red means soulless and unrevivable. Green means that the soul is present, and the body or its brain can be taken to Science to be put in a cyborg chassis.
Stabilizing and Administering Medication
Patients are often dragged in gasping for air in a critical state. The usual response to this is to inject Epinephrine to stabilize them, which has the effect of stopping O2 loss. Everyone starts with an Epipen inside their survival box, which contains 15u of Epinephrine. Medical doctors also have one extra Epipen on their medical belt, while Paramedics start with 3. If you run out there are also bottles inside the NanoMed of Epinephrine which you can administer with a syringe, also inside the vendor. Chemists can make more if they have access to welding fuel, but if they don't, Botanist can supply lingzhi which can be turned into epinephrine.
Putting dead patients on a stasis bed will help slow down rotting by 10x. This is a great boon, as it allows for a corpse to stay unrotted for up to 100 minutes. However, take note that the stasis bed slows metabolism dramatically, and as a result, the effects of chems will happen much, much slower unless taken off the stasis bed. The stasis bed will also asphyxiate and deal air loss damage to living and critical patients, so it is essential to take them off stasis as soon as they are revived. Ointments, gauze, brute packs, blood bags, medicated sutures, and regenerative meshes still work just as well as they do not rely on metabolism to heal. Be careful of overdosing while on the stasis bed. While they may seem fine on the bed, you might administer too much and result in them overdosing the moment they get off of the bed.
If you don't have Epinephrine then Inaprovaline can also be useful, to a lesser degree.
When it comes to administering your medication, it doesn’t matter if it's in pill or injection. Pills contain higher volumes of medication, up to 20 units, but take time to metabolize due to digestion. Syringes, after a short doafter, kick in almost instantly, with the drawback of only being able to insert and hold up to 15u. You can change the amount injected(5,10,15) by right-clicking the syringe. Note that moths cannot take pills, as they find any non-cloth item repulsive to eat, needing injections or dissolved pills instead.
The CMO also has their hypospray, which injects instantly in 5u doses. It can hold up to 30u, and is a fantastic combat tool both in healing and offence.
Common Chemicals
These are chemicals you should probably keep a jug or two of on hand.
- Heals 3.5 Asphyxiation and 3 Bloodloss
- Removes 3u of heartbreaker toxin from the solution when there's at least 1u of heartbreaker toxin
- Deals 5 Asphyxiation and 3 Cold when there's at least 25u of dexalin plus
- Heals 1.5 Heat, 1.5 Shock, and 1.5 Cold
- Deals 0.5 Brute, 1 Asphyxiation, and 2 Cold when there's at least 10u of dermaline
- Causes jittering when there's at least 10u of dermaline
- Heals 2 Brute
- Deals 0.5 Asphyxiation and 1.5 Poison when there's at least 15u of bicaridine
- Has a 2% chance to cause vomiting when there's at least 30u of bicaridine
- Causes jittering when there's at least 15u of bicaridine
- Causes drunkness
- Heals 1 Brute, 0.5 Poison, 0.33 Heat, 0.33 Shock, and 0.33 Cold when it has at most 50 total damage
- Modifies health by 0.5 Brute and 3 Radiation
- Reduces bleeding
- Deals 3 Bloodloss when there's at least 15u of tranexamic acid
- Heals 0.5 Brute, 0.5 Burn, 3 Asphyxiation, and 0.5 Poison when the mob is critical and there's at most 20u of epinephrine
- Deals 1 Asphyxiation and 1 Poison when there's at least 20u of epinephrine
- Removes 2u of heartbreaker toxin from the solution
- Removes 1u of epinephrine from the solution when there's at least 1u of heartbreaker toxin
- Has a 10% chance to add 4u of histamine to the solution when there's at least 1u of heartbreaker toxin
- Removes 0.75s of stunning
- Removes 0.75s of knockdown
- Causes adrenaline for at least 0.5s without accumulation
- Heals 1 Poison
- Deals 2 Brute when there's at least 20u of dylovene
- Causes jittering when there's at least 20u of dylovene
- Has a 2% chance to cause vomiting when there's at least 20u of dylovene
- Causes drunkness when there's at least 15u of dylovene
Plants (0.5u per second)
- Adjusts toxins level by -10
- Adjusts health by 1
Types of damage
Crewmates will experience different physical damages during their time in space. Depending on the source, the damage type can vary significantly.
A health analyzer can be used to determine the damage inflicted on a patient. Multiple types of damage may be present, and the patient will need multiple treatments or medications.
Damage | Treatment |
---|---|
Brute | Bruise pack, Bicaridine, Tricordrazine, Poppy |
Caustic | Siderlac, Sigynate |
Burn | Ointment, Dermaline, Kelotane, Tricordrazine, Aloe cream |
Airloss | Defibrillator, Dexalin, Dexalin Plus, Epinephrine, Inaprovaline |
Toxin | Dylovene, Ultravasculine, Arithrazine, Hyronalin, Stellibinin, Diphenhydramine |
Genetic | Phalanximine |
Bleeding | Bandages, Blood pack, Pulped banana peel, Inaprovaline, Tranexamic acid, Iron |
Brute damage
There are three types of brute damage: blunt, slash, and piercing. At present all instances of brute damage can be treated the same.
If the damage isn't severe, a bruise pack can be applied. Bruise packs heal 5 points of brute damage per use in each category, meaning one use of the pack (which has 5 uses in total) will heal 5 blunt, 5 slash, and 5 piercing. Anything more than that, and you're better off using proper medication.
Bicaridine is the best option for healing straight brute damage, healing 2 brute damage per unit. If you do not have Bicaridine on hand, the next best thing to look for is Tricordrazine. Tricordrazine will cure 1 brute damage, on top of 0.5 poison, and 1 burn. It's not as potent, will require a higher dosage on some patients to see them through their ailment, and only works if the total damage is less than 50. If all else is unavailable, or the patient is dead, use brute packs.
Gauze can swiftly heal slash and piercing brute damage to an extent as well as stop bleeding completely, which makes it invaluable for treating wounds. Cloth can be used the same way, and 2 is needed to craft gauze by hand, but does not work as well as gauze by itself.
Burn damage
There are four types of burn damage: heat, shock, cold, and caustic. As with brute, minor instances of burn damage can be treated by simply applying ointment instead. However, while bruise packs heal three categories of damage in brute, ointment onals heat and shock. It will heal 10 points of damage, 5 in each category, per use. Ointment will also heal caustic damage, albeit less effectively(2.5 points).
Aloe Cream and Regenerative Mesh are also good options for burn topicals, and both will heal more efficiently than ointment.
The best option for healing burn damage of any kind is Dermaline. This will heal 4.5 (1.5 cold, shock, and heat respectively) damage per unit of the medication applied. Take extra care to not overdose, as it's maximum safe dose is 10u, and the syringe's maximum amount is 15u. You may simply inject the 10u, or fill the 5u with another drug, such as Tricordrazine.
However, Dermaline will not treat caustic damage. For this, you must use Sigynate, or Siderlac.
If Dermaline is not available, there is Kelotane, a precursor to Dermaline, which will only heal 1 (0.33 cold, shock, and heat respectively) burn per unit of medication applied.
Last but not least, Tricordrazine will also heal 1 burn (0.33 cold, shock, and heat respectively) damage a unit, along with 1 poison and 2 brute.
Airloss damage
Before reading anything else: if someone is on the ground gasping, you should first use an emergency medipen, or inject Epinephrine on them if no one else already has yet, and then move them to a medical bed if there are any available. This will give you time to prepare a more specific treatment. Next check that their internals are off (if theres air in medbay) or on (if theres no air in medbay). You do this by their right click menu.
When it comes to asphyxiation, Epinephrine is good for stabilizing patients losing air to give you time to work on them, but it will only temporarily divert the issue. Get them some proper medication. An easier to make alternative to stabilize patients is Inaprovaline, which does the same thing but to a lesser extent, and also is far easier for the chemists to make. These medications do not lower asphyxiation below 100, they only prevent it from getting higher.
To actually treat asphyxiation, Dexalin and Dexalin Plus are your friends. Dexalin will treat 2 asphyxiation damage, and one 1 bloodloss. Dexalin Plus will treat 6 asphyxiation damage, and 4 bloodloss.
Alternatively, if someone is in critical condition or dead, a defibrillator can be used to heal up to 40 asphyxiation damage while applying 5 units of shock damage.
Toxin damage
There are two types of toxin damage, and both are treated with different medications.
The first kind is poison damage. For poison, your most widely available option to detox is Dylovene. Dylovene heals 2 poison damage per unit. Technically, Diphenhydramine or Stellibinin(sourced from Galaxythistle) are far superior in terms of healing poison damage, however both are more difficult to source. Ultravasculine is also an option, however it comes with the side effect of dealing brute damage alongside the detox.
If you do not have Dylovene, you can also use Tricordrazine to heal 1 poison damage per unit to heal any damage below 50.
The next kind of toxin is Radiation damage. Radiation can be treated with Hyronalin, but can be best treated with Arithrazine. Arithrazine heals 6 radiation per unit, however deals 1 brute damage per unit.
Blood loss
To fully understand blood loss you need to understand that everyone has a volume of blood inside them. When you take brute damage, in a gun fight for example, you will lose blood. You may also start noticeably bleeding, which continually drains your blood. If your blood level falls below a certain threshold, you will begin taking blood loss damage and you will continue to do so until your blood levels return to normal. When you lose enough blood, you will start seeing double, as well as start to stutter heavily.
If someone is bleeding heavily there are 3 things to do;
- Stop the bleeding
- Restore blood levels
- Cure blood loss damage
To stop bleeding (to stop blood levels from dropping continuously), you should use gauze or Tranexamic acid. Inaprovaline and Pulped banana peel also reduce bleeding but Tranexamic acid is 3 times more powerful than pulped banana peel and 6 times more powerful than Inaprovaline. It should be noted that emergency medipens contain a small amount of Tranexamic Acid (3u).
To restore blood level (stop double vision and stop continuous blood loss damage), you need to administer Iron or Saline. When the blood loss damage value has stopped going up, that means the blood level has returned to normal (not full, but not low enough to cause harm). If the patient is an arachnid, note that Iron is toxic to them. Use Copper instead, which will provide the same effect to them.
Your patient may have enough blood loss damage at any point in treatment to warrant curing the damage. To do so, you will want to apply Dexalin Plus, Iron, or less effectively, Dexalin to cure the blood loss damage. Patients who are no longer low on blood will slowly recover from blood loss damage on their own without medication.
Do not simply treat the patient for their blood loss damage and send them on their way. They may appear to be cured on your health analyzer, but if their bleeding has not been stopped and their blood levels restored to normal(>90%), they will still suffer from blood loss over time.
Medical Reference for Chemistry
also see the Medicine page for a more in-depth look at medical chems
How to Deal with a Pandemic
Virology is currently removed from the game. The only disease to remain, is zombification, contracted through romerol.