Drug interactions and side-effects

[Bauser]

In real life, not all pharmaceuticals can be safely administered to a person at the same time. This is because every drug interacts with the body in a specific way to perform its function, so sometimes one medicine will also affect the mechanism of another one, causing a wide variety of consequences. Another consideration is that many drugs have side-effects, which are unintended, secondary outcomes which result from the drug's primary function.

In the interest of further developing the practice of medicine in Aurora, I suggest we add drug effects to represent these interactions and side-effects. It's worth noting that some side-effects are already present in the game. If you use a high enough dose of bicardine to treat internal bleeding, it will cause toxin damage. arithrazine, a treatment for severe radiation poisoning, causes brute damage. These side-effects create complex problems for doctors, forcing them to more carefully consider the exact status of their patients and evaluate multiple treatment options. I suggest adding more varied side-effects to more drugs. For instance, it would make sense for painkillers to cause sleepiness. Maybe severe drug treatments could result in severe side-effects, like temporary paralysis, deafness, or pain. I invite everyone to suggest specific side-effects for specific medicines.

Drug interactions could be simulated by making new recipes that simply result from the mixing of two drugs. Since the human body acts as a container in Space Station 13, administering those drugs together would form the new chemical, and the medical consequences could be anything we can dream of. What if taking adipemcina (a heart medication) alongside cryoxedone (which slows your heart rate) could actually stop your heart? Or other mixtures of drugs could cause different organ damage. Maybe taking dermaline and kelotane - both burn treatments - together could cause nausea and vomiting. There are lots of possible results from drug interactions, just like side-effects. From simple things like drowsiness to extreme things like loss of motor control.

As before, I invite everyone to come up with your own possibilities.

[Garnascus]

Drug interactions could be simulated by making new recipes that simply result from the mixing of two drugs. Since the human body acts as a container in Space Station 13, administering those drugs together would form the new chemical, and the medical consequences could be anything we can dream of. What if taking adipemcina (a heart medication) alongside cryoxedone (which slows your heart rate) could actually stop your heart? Or other mixtures of drugs could cause different organ damage.

 

 

I dunno man. We have a problem as it is with medical bay turning into "malpractice bay" when shit hits the fan. Currently you're either good at medical and you know how to deal with situations or you are inexperienced and you make things worse. There is very little in between. I feel like this will only lengthen the gap.

[Bauser]

Isn't the challenge of responding effectively to medical problems where the fun comes from, for medical personnel? This suggestion is intended to widen the gap between those who know their craft and those who don't.

It's worth noting, however, that the examples of drug interactions I gave are extreme ones (cardiac events and organ damage). A way to make this suggestion less damaging would be to make MOST of the drug interaction effects much less severe, and this is fully my intention. Things like temporary sleepiness, blurry vision, hallucinations, or involuntary movement - none of these things would really inhibit the patient's ability to play, but they would be enough to inform the doctor that they made a mistake and should feel bad.

And then you have the extreme examples like heart attacks to generate !!fun!! in rare cases.

[MO_oNyMan]

Me like. Anything that makes existing jobs more in-depth is good. And we already have drug interactions with alcohol (i think?). Diving into that direction would be a step towards immersion and realism. My only concern is that of sideffects. As garn said medbay can be a slaughter house as is. Getting paralyzed for half a round because of a retarded surgeon is sub-optimal imo. if you're going to severely handicap people for mixing drugs, think about how can this be made interactive, so that they wouldn't feel left out despite not being able to do anything active

[SleepyWolf]

if this is included with positive effects between other medicines as well, maybe tricord and alcohol just makes the tricord fucking Extreme Heal, and maybe even heal internal bleeding or some shit. someone else can think of better combos i'm just throwing the 'alcohol and drugs help somehow' idea out there. and not just alocohl, but other drugs as well, tricord and bicard maybe doing some janky fuckin shit

[Saudus]

Everyone knows animal protein supercharges bicaridine.

[Scheveningen]

I'm really dubious about chemical mixtures creating certain interactions that basically combo on top of each other to either create a IJustGotShitFuckedByATraitorChemist cocktail or a *HSSS*AAAHTHATSTHESTUFF stimpack. I think chems create situations where some people already have incredible advantages with one chemical in their system alone, or it kills them almost assuredly. I don't think we need to ramp up either to 11.

[Bauser]

It wouldn't make much sense for medicines combine to become even stronger, anyway. Even though it is theoretically possible, drug interactions don't typically increase the effectiveness of medicines because it's much, much easier to make something go wrong in a the way a pharmaceutical works than it is to make it go right - owing to the complexity of the body and chemicals.

So, I'm mostly here for the negative effects and, again, primarily the minor ones.

[climax708]

I think that one way to solve this is to reduce the effectiveness of medicine the more medicine someone has in them.

So you won't make a "triage pill" that fixes all damage types, because then it would be super ineffective.

Would still make you consider "Do I inject him with this as well, or not?".