Lowering the minimum age for Medical Resident

[Paprikue]

Hello..
With the recent removal of medical alt titles including medical intern, there is now a problem; a clear lack of learner lore for the medical department, especially one that's intended for young characters. I used to have a particularly young medical intern character which I'm now unable to use without some serious modifications, since the minimum age required for a character to be a medical resident is 25 years old.

I find that the medical resident's original intention was to be a medbay helper role, not a learner one. Sure, they're a lot less qualified than a physician and needed supervision, but there's still a major powergap between a completely inexperienced 18 year old medical intern and a medical resident who already graduated from their medical school.
A medical resident, in-character wise would be still considered competent enough to be able to help without constant pointing. (Not very good for a newbie.)

There's also a second point to make, which is the fact that other departments still have a dedicated young learner role, such as Security Cadet, and Engineering Apprentice. The age requirement for those roles is still 18 years old minimum, a lot lower than the medical resident.

This leaves us with options.

1. Simply lower the Medical Resident role's minimum age requirement to 18 like the other helper roles, and set an IC standard that they could be completely inexperienced.
2. Re-add Medical Intern as an alternate title or completely seperate role, to be specifically considered a beginner learner role and one that requires less qualifications than Medical Resident.
3. Since the qualifications, requirements, and tasks for a medical resident closely resemble a nurse's anyway...Just split medical resident into Nurse and Medical Intern. Now the roles are clearly cut, one is for supervised assistance, and the other is for learning and acquiring experience. If anything, Medical Resident (or Medical Helper) should be an alternate title for Nurse as a more 'neutral sounding' title.

I personally favour option 2, feel free to discuss the options or suggest your own. Thank you.

Edited October 20, 2020 by Paprikue
18 years, not 17

[Kintsugi]

Wholly opposed to option number 1, as medical residents IRL are considerably older than 17 typically. I'd rather go with 2.

[Pratepresidenten]

Better option would be to swap the resident title for the intern. (With an age decrease) since they're meant to be green?

[Paprikue]

2 minutes ago, Pratepresidenten said:

Better option would be to swap the resident title for the intern. (With an age decrease) since they're meant to be green?

The problem is that has the opposite issue of leaving the medical department without a dedicated helper (but not necessarily learner) role, although maybe that's not a major issue?

[Sheeplets]

Medical residents in real life are doctorate holders, usually employed by teaching hospitals after graduation. I won't speak for Alberyk's personal reasoning but most discussion I've heard around the topic of removing the alt titles was that it was done to distance us from IRL protocol and give us more leeway to ad lib it and fill in our own blanks. I agree with that philosophy wholeheartedly. What being said, I doubt residents would be hired on a research station in the middle of nowhere and I think the intern role would be perfect if kept by itself. Lower the age requirement, lower the expectations, and lower the bar to help people get over themselves and the fact that it's a learning role for new players.

[stev]

17 minutes ago, UncleJo said:

Medical residents in real life are doctorate holders, usually employed by teaching hospitals after graduation. I won't speak for Alberyk's personal reasoning but most discussion I've heard around the topic of removing the alt titles was that it was done to distance us from IRL protocol and give us more leeway to ad lib it and fill in our own blanks. I agree with that philosophy wholeheartedly. What being said, I doubt residents would be hired on a research station in the middle of nowhere and I think the intern role would be perfect if kept by itself. Lower the age requirement, lower the expectations, and lower the bar to help people get over themselves and the fact that it's a learning role for new players.

Agree with pretty much all of this, get rid of Resident in favour of the far less IRL-coded Medical Intern/Assistant. Also worth noting that since Physician age was lowered to 25 to account for qualifications other than MDs, both Residents and Physicians have the same age restriction of 25 which is pretty wacky.

[Faris]

We can just call it medical intern, a person can flavor their internship as a residency.

Cadets can already do the same as flavoring their cadetship to a certain role. Engineering apprentices have the same thing. Lab Assistants too. 

[Paprikue]

Although it seems like we're mostly in agreement about the issue, I've decided to create a quick poll to get a general gauge for what most people think.
https://www.strawpoll.me/21126467

[Chada1]

As a counter suggestion, why not rename the role entirely to 'Medical Orderly', so it can be anyone from a doctor going through residency to just a medical assistant?

Medical Resident as a whole seems like a thing Aurora should steer clear of, it has a lot of real life baggage that noone wants to deal with.

You avoid all of these issues by just renaming it and lowering the age requirement to 17

Edited October 19, 2020 by Chada1

[Chada1]

Oof Aboshehab/Prate beat me to it, medical intern is the best shot I think. Keeping it as Medical Resident at all seems like it's just going to go through endless revisions like this.

Edited October 19, 2020 by Chada1

[Flamingo]

Agree with Abo.

 

The medical role changes (and the chemical name changes) were specifically made to distance us from real-life parallels with medicine, and allow us to do something without long arguments about realism versus gameplay. I think that simply renaming the Medical Resident to Medical Intern is fine, along with a lowering in the age requirement. Players of the Medical Intern can flavor their internship however they want.

[Shenaanigans]

I'm also in agreement with Flamingo/Abo. It's easier to just standardize the learner role age and expectations across the departments and let people add flavor via records and character interaction as they prefer.

[Carver]

The less 17 year olds on the station, the better. Anything but option 1.

Edit: More supportive of Option 1 if it's 18 instead. Leaving my original comment for reference.

Edited October 20, 2020 by Carver

[kait]

maybe leave medical resident as it is, and just add a medical intern with a lowered age cap and a bit different role that would more suit them?

[StationCrab]

The age stuff doesn't really concern me, but we do need a role for people who are new to medical that makes sense. Intern should be added back. It is essentially medical bay's cadet role. Every complex department should have one.

[Flpfs]

I've made a PR about it

https://github.com/Aurorastation/Aurora.3/pull/10315