Merge and Standardise Medical Roles

[Zundy]

Essentially, we'd have this setup:

Intern - Training role. Like in other departments this is for players to get to grips with the medical officer job role. Potentially can do anything if no other roles are online or if the need is dire.

Medical Officer - Can do everything. Surgery, medicine. Everything.

Pharmaceutical Medical Officer - Makes the drugs. I'd actually go so far as to have this merged with Medical Officer since the right chems are extremely important to medical to be honest but I guess they can exist seperate if they must. Can still do everything if no Medical Officers are available.

Emergency Medical Officer - A medical officer that focuses on getting people to medbay. Can still do everything if no Medical Officers are available.

Chief Medical Officer - Can do everything in medical. Runs the department.

This aligns with every other department and reduces the strange skill gymnastics medical, and only medical, has. You'll always be able to be treated if medical staff are on. You won't need to memorise a spreadsheet of skills to know what you're allowed to perform.

What do you think?

 

[TheSleepyCatmom]

How does this make sense from an education standpoint? In an IC sense.

Aaalso how does this make sense in a logical standpoint? If everyone can do everything with no issues, everyone must have the same qualifications, thereby making having different roles entirely useless? I'm just confused as to what this would actually, really, do for anything. It doesn't fix anything outside of removing roles and adding an min-age to the entire department due to needed qualifications, as well as removing any semblance of specialty in the department. Chemists can no longer be hired since they need a MD because they're also a Medical Officer? I'm, not following the sense, I guess. It's super weird.

[Faye <3]

I share Catmom's sentiments. I don't super enjoy this, especially with the note for CMOs. I guess I sort of main CMO now, and a lot of people confuse CMO with 'being able to do everything'. A CMO is not a super doctor,- for instance, my character is fully licensed to perform any sort of surgery and administer any chem, can produce the essentials in chemistry. She cannot perform EVA activities, and her psychology licensure only allows her to perform broad examinations and declare someone unfit for work if required. CMOs acting as a super-doctor has been an issue in the past, and I feel like this would exacerbate it. the CMO is meant to keep the department organized and together, not do everything.

 

The difference between emergency officer and officer feels quite redundant. If they can perform the same jobs as one another, why separate them at all? I think a better solution to 'sometimes you go to medical and the medical staff cannot help you' is to be very careful in ensuring what physicians, surgeons and interns can do. For instance, physicians retaining the ability to fix arterials is highly important.

 

This also just forgets about psychologists, which like, yeah fair enough but they're still there.

Edited February 2, 2021 by Faye <3

[Sparky_hotdog]

This feels... wrong? Idk, but my view on this kind of goes as follows:

Merging the two pharmacist titles (that is pharmacist and chemist) into one seems fine. I don't think there's any IC distinction, and most respond to either title so that'd be fine I think.

I'm not sure how I feel about FRs being able to do everything. I get that it's a pain if no Doctors are around, but I feel this should be dealt with more ICly with a radio announcement of "Be careful today, I can't patch you up perfectly if you get hurt." I know antags can cause even the most cautious player to end up heavily injured, but that makes low-medstaff rounds scary.

As for merging Physician and Surgeon, hard no. As a relatively new medical player, I still see surgeons commonly pushing physicians aside to treat patients, even with the distinction. If these were the same role. some (and I know some would be respectful about this) of the more experienced surgeon mains of the moment would likely end up becoming the only people treating patients. It would also mean that Physician mains would have to learn all the surgeries, and while I don't think any of the advanced surgeries are mechanically much harder, it feels odd to say that NT only hires people capable of brain surgery.

Overall, this feels like it would remove the sort of stratified nature of medical I like. Someone gets picked up by a FR, passed to a physician who then, if necessary, passes them onto a surgeon who then, again if needed, passes them back to a physician.

Edit: Completely forgot about Psychologists/Psychiatrists. Given that these roles basically only see use in RP, the people who play them don't want to get roped into doing surgery for the round or whatever. So making them part of Physician is also not great imho.

Edited February 2, 2021 by Sparky_hotdog

[Zundy]

All these issues and more apply to all other departments and yet they do not actually have any trouble at all accomodating this. 

I'd imagine education wise you'd study a degree in Medicine, that qualification being very different to what medicine is in irl 2021. 

We did have a similar issue in engineering years back and the same arguments were made, but the idea that holes need plugging and the engine needs starting trumped them so we standardised the titles. 

It won't effect the relationships or character of your characters, you'll merely be able to do more. It is a very big pain when you have to sit with broken bones because the only person on is a physician just like it was a pain to sit in the dark with no power when only an electrician was on in years gone by.

Let's choose change, my friends. Let's choose a brighter tomorrow.

[BoryaTheSlayer]

We already cut down on all the alternative roles that had brought a lot of confusion previously. It's already been standardized and I don't see a point in going even further. Besides, not being able to do everything makes you rely on the co-workers in your department, provides possibility for teamplay and in general makes the department more dynamic.

[Zundy]

Same could be said of the other departments and yet they're totally fine. The reality is that you have situations where you can't get treated properly, just like the old engineering alt titles.

[Roostercat]

I dislike this. This REALLY cuts out any variety the department has left after the alt titles were removed and turns everyone in the department into all knowing super doctors, which is already a complaint with some surgeons.

[Zundy]

I'm totally happy with Medical Officers doing all the healing and Pharmaceutical Medical Officers doing all the brewing. The complaints about surgeons being OP is a departmental complaint due to surgeons making a physicians role superfluous and I agree, that's why I think they should be merged instead of trying to draw a shakey line between them.

Once again, the same could be said of the other departments who manage totally fine with three jobs.

[BoryaTheSlayer]

56 minutes ago, Zundy said:

Same could be said of the other departments and yet they're totally fine.

I can hardly see this as an argument for anything at all. How are they totally fine? How can the same be said of other departments? I don't get it, what are your examples?

 

57 minutes ago, Zundy said:

The reality is that you have situations where you can't get treated properly, just like the old engineering alt titles.

A lot of things have alternative ways of treatment. Organ damage can be fixed with peridaxon, even if it takes slower, for example. As for things that do absolutely require surgery, some of them don't need a specialized surgeon. Bone repair can be done by physicians, if need be.

[Zundy]

25 minutes ago, BoryaTheSlayer said:

I can hardly see this as an argument for anything at all. How are they totally fine? How can the same be said of other departments? I don't get it, what are your examples?

What do you mean? Science and Engineering have three jobs. The reality of their jobs especially regarding the tasks that they carry out on station, using the logic for having so many jobs in medical, means they're unbelievable/restrictive/lack variety and yet there is no issue with those characters. No one is lamenting that they can't just be an electrotech, that they'll have to set up the engine or questioning the believablity of their credentials versus their tasks. We're just fine with it and it IS fine because it doesn't effect your character except in a trivial way (you studied Engineering/Science instead of a course in Electronics/PhD in Apple Breeding). 

The same arguments being made here or should I say the same worries that people have, applied to those departments when their alt titles were stripped back and everything's fine. Nothing detrimental happened except now we can have all hands on deck in those departments which is a good thing.

25 minutes ago, BoryaTheSlayer said:

A lot of things have alternative ways of treatment. Organ damage can be fixed with peridaxon, even if it takes slower, for example. As for things that do absolutely require surgery, some of them don't need a specialized surgeon. Bone repair can be done by physicians, if need be.

Things we've added in an attempt to differentiate them rooted in people appealing to real life (which we don't do anywhere else). There's no point, just merge them instead of drawing a jagged line.

Edited February 2, 2021 by Zundy

[BoryaTheSlayer]

20 minutes ago, Zundy said:

What do you mean? Science and Engineering have three jobs. The reality of their jobs especially regarding the tasks that they carry out on station, using the logic for having so many jobs in medical, means they're unbelievable/restrictive/lack variety and yet there is no issue with those characters. No one is lamenting that they can't just be an electrotech, that they'll have to set up the engine or questioning the believablity of their credentials versus their tasks. We're just fine with it and it IS fine because it doesn't effect your character except in a trivial way (you studied Engineering/Science instead of a course in Electronics/PhD in Apple Breeding). 

Science may have 3 jobs, but they have several alt-titles for just the scientist. It's done because you can't be a professional at everything. Same applies here- except here in medical we actually got rid of all the alt-titles that distributed the responsibilities TOO MUCH, and have reached the balance we currently have. And no, if you ARE a scientist, then you do have a PhD in whatever it is you specialize in. This is also a redundant argument as you're using an example of two departments that suit your narrative, when we can look at security and see 4 whopping jobs all with their responsibilities distributed around in a way that each role relies on the other role to do their job. Just like medical. And security works fine.

 

24 minutes ago, Zundy said:

The same arguments being made here or should I say the same worries that people have, applied to those departments when their alt titles were stripped back and everything's fine. Nothing detrimental happened except now we can have all hands on deck in those departments which is a good thing.

Yes, it also happened in medical and we got rid of all those alt-titles. The other departments are fine after those changes, and so is medical.

 

24 minutes ago, Zundy said:

Things we've added in an attempt to differentiate them rooted in people appealing to real life (which we don't do anywhere else). There's no point, just merge them instead of drawing a jagged line.

What?

All in all, I feel like this just boils down to "Change it so they can do everything!!!" Which is not something I really like, because, once again, I like teamplay, and I like when we need multiple people for some situations. Giving all the power to a single role will create even more situations where people will just do everything themselves, not letting anybody else in the department have fun and do their job as well.

[Zundy]

37 minutes ago, BoryaTheSlayer said:

Science may have 3 jobs, but they have several alt-titles for just the scientist. It's done because you can't be a professional at everything. Same applies here- except here in medical we actually got rid of all the alt-titles that distributed the responsibilities TOO MUCH, and have reached the balance we currently have. And no, if you ARE a scientist, then you do have a PhD in whatever it is you specialize in. This is also a redundant argument as you're using an example of two departments that suit your narrative, when we can look at security and see 4 whopping jobs all with their responsibilities distributed around in a way that each role relies on the other role to do their job. Just like medical. And security works fine.

If security has an CQC officer and a ranged officer I'd want those merged too. I'm talking about situations when seperating the roles caused issues in gameplay, like meaning the engine wasn't on, or not being treated because there's no surgeon so you have to have your arms cut off to stop arterial bleeding (something that happened).

Also that's four jobs to six and we seperated out warden and CSI because of player numbers (sec is always booming) not because of RP or anything like that though it is handy with those guys. My change leaves us with four jobs.

 

38 minutes ago, BoryaTheSlayer said:

Yes, it also happened in medical and we got rid of all those alt-titles. The other departments are fine after those changes, and so is medical.

Just one more, merge surgeon and physician and you will never again have to worry about drafting up spreadsheets to explain what functions they're allowed to carry out. There will still be a pharmacist, still be an EMT, still be a CMO. 

 

43 minutes ago, BoryaTheSlayer said:

What?

Come on man. No need to become curt, we're just talking and it's only a suggestion not a change that's being forced through.

47 minutes ago, BoryaTheSlayer said:

All in all, I feel like this just boils down to "Change it so they can do everything!!!"

I can see why you'd think that and I'm personally happy if Pharmaceutical Medical Officer or whatever the name would end up being being pulled away from generally medical work. Afterall, roboticist don't do science and atmos doesn't do engineering. Though I do seem to recall roboticists being allowed to do R&D when there's no R&D (because it's critical to their role) and atmos to do engines (because it's critical to the round) when no scientists/engineers are on. Someone feel free to correct me on that because I can't recall 100%, especially regarding the atmos.

[BoryaTheSlayer]

2 minutes ago, Zundy said:

Just one more, merge surgeon and physician and you will never again have to worry about drafting up spreadsheets to explain what functions they're allowed to carry out. There will still be a pharmacist, still be an EMT, still be a CMO. 

They'll be made as long as I'll have to. Current position works fine for reasons I've stated twice now.

2 minutes ago, Zundy said:

Come on man. No need to become curt, we're just talking and it's only a suggestion not a change that's being forced through.

No, I just legitimately didn't understand what you were saying. I'm not trying to be rude, I read it 10 times and still didn't get it. It was a legitimate "What?", but I didn't expand on it because I was just so dumbfounded.

 

3 minutes ago, Zundy said:

I can see why you'd think that and I'm personally happy if Pharmaceutical Medical Officer or whatever the name would end up being being pulled away from generally medical work. Afterall, roboticist don't do science and atmos doesn't do engineering. Though I do seem to recall roboticists being allowed to do R&D when there's no R&D (because it's critical to their role) and atmos to do engines (because it's critical to the round) when no scientists/engineers are on. Someone feel free to correct me on that because I can't recall 100%, especially regarding the atmos.

Okay? It doesn't fix everything else you suggested though.

[Zundy]

 

22 minutes ago, BoryaTheSlayer said:

They'll be made as long as I'll have to. Current position works fine for reasons I've stated twice now.

What reasons? We've been back and forthing so I'm not 100%. Better variety and teamplay?

Give me a sec, the forums are being stupid and not letting me post properly.

Edited February 2, 2021 by Zundy

[BoryaTheSlayer]

1 hour ago, BoryaTheSlayer said:

once again, I like teamplay, and I like when we need multiple people for some situations. Giving all the power to a single role will create even more situations where people will just do everything themselves, not letting anybody else in the department have fun and do their job as well.

 

[Zundy]

Sorry about it being a pic. It literally will not let me post that. @BoryaTheSlayer

Edited February 2, 2021 by Zundy

[Sparky_hotdog]

Your reason for wanting all of medical to be able to do all of medical seems to be rooted in being unable to be treated. But there are general ways of treating most basic stuff with only two or so medical members.

No Responder? People can run, and a fair number of doctors (plus a bunch of other departments) are EVA trained for recovery.

No Chemist? This... does suck sometimes. If you have a surgeon and are fast you can sort of get away with it, but honestly, one of my most enjoyable moments in medical was managing to keep three severe burn patients alive on my own, with nothing but cryo, sleepers and the meds from the nanomed. It wasn't pretty, fast or ideal, but it worked.

No Physician? Honestly, this is a small thing. I say this as a Physician to be: We're not essential. Most surgeons can fill in for a physician if there is none.

No surgeon? Well, conversely to the chemist, most surgeon unique surgeries can be fixed with chemicals.

No Psych? These guys pretty much only do RP things, so...

No CMO? As Faye said earlier, CMOs aren't super doctors, they're just good doctors who are also good at leading, and in there absence medical is the same as any other department without a head.

If you end up in a situation where any medical staff short of a Psych or Intern can't fix you on there own because their character doesn't have the skills, you've seriously injured yourself and that's a consequence that exists, which is fine by me.

You made a reference earlier to having someone refuse to fix a broken bone because they're only a physician. Firstly, that's wrong. Physicians are supposed (if I'm reading the wiki correctly) to be able to perform bone repair. And if there was just a responder on, that's what splints are for. Which I think highlights the core of my point: By making everyone able to do the absolute best solution, all of the half solutions feel unnecessary, even though imperfect medical treatment often brings about better roleplay.

(Apologies, this is very long, but I think it expresses all my thoughts.)

[Shenaanigans]

I'm an avid supporter of there being limits on what someone within a department can do, because super doctors/engineers/scientists who can run a department totally on their own is very much not conducive to RP and, instead, encourages people to just focus on knowing all the mechanics rather than relying on other people to fill roles they're not trained for. Medical especially is a specialized field. Chemistry and surgery aren't an "advanced tier" of medical that you simultaneously unlock the knowledge to be able to do after X years of schooling and I would definitely not want to see someone zooming around the department churning out advanced chems, retrieving patients, doing treatment in the GTR, and then whisking them off for brain surgery. It's very... LRP, to put it one way.

I think medical is in a very good place now that the alt-titles have been scrubbed and the expectations for each role standardized. If you're a Pharmacist, you work in the Pharmacy. A Physician, you focus on the GTR. A Surgeon, work in the ORs. And so on and so on-- with the CMO being given a pass to pick more than one but not all.

[Carver]

I like everything but the weirdly contrived 'Emergency Medical Officer', which seems utterly redundant with the plain Medical Officer existing. Pharmaceutical Medical Officer, whilst making sense for existing still, could probably do with a non-Officer title (or just leaving it as is) because it's a mouthful.

[DatSamTho]

Yeah, that's a phat -1 from me. Making it so that everyone can do everything seems very counter intuitive for good rp. And it would break most EMT characters, since unless every super doctor isn't an actual doctor, most current EMT characters that have a certificate instead of a doctorate, would need to be removed or changed greatly.

[Cnaym]

23 hours ago, Sparky_hotdog said:

No Chemist? This... does suck sometimes. If you have a surgeon and are fast you can sort of get away with it, but honestly, one of my most enjoyable moments in medical was managing to keep three severe burn patients alive on my own, with nothing but cryo, sleepers and the meds from the nanomed. It wasn't pretty, fast or ideal, but it worked.

This is my favorite part about medical and the mere existence of our hillariously broken chemicals make such moments a rarity.

At first glance the suggestion seems to destroy what our current concept of a medbay tries to do. It's a case of gameplay freedom versus roleplay restrictions.

On the one hand I would love much stricter restrictions and a heavier focus on roleplay and skill instead of the current heavy focus on play to win.

On the other hand this was a permanent issue since I joined the server and is the closes reflection of the antag mindset any crew department displays. I get daily reminders that security tries to win, medical HAS to win. This ranges from IC complaints to looc and dead chat salt. It's not the same as shutting the antags down, but the level of "just patch me asap and roleplay with someone else" is heartbreaking to say the least.

There is this idea that a mechanical restriction is preferable to an administrative one. And from my time on the admin team I would have to agree. There is simply not much to be done about 90% of our medical players focusing on the winning aspect. I would have some ideas like nerfing chemicals or implementing a skill system to reduce it, but ultimately it's futile if the mindset remains the same.

Now onto the suggested changes. They are a very simple solution to a very complex issue. But overall I consider them a solution by now. If everyone wants to Dr. House they can do so now, it'll be chaotic at the beginning but overall it should get rid of a lot of confusion and issues people run into with the medbay systems. On the other hand the roleplay focus remains open ended and everyone is free to roleplay their chars and specialization as the want to. I don't see why me being able to access everything would limit me in how I play my doctor or what to focus on. Just slam into their records that they are primarily a shrink or surgeon and that's it. If you prefer chems you do them, if you prefer surgery you do that, if you wanna be an intern or a nurse (slam that as alt title for intern) and be done with it really. The only thing that would need a little adjustments is the slots, but I do not think that less than 6 medical members would be a negative change overall.

[Sparky_hotdog]

1 hour ago, Cnaym said:

On the other hand the roleplay focus remains open ended and everyone is free to roleplay their chars and specialization as the want to.

My worry is that this wouldn't be the case. With the roles as is, if someone needs an appendix removed or something else which my character, as a trainee physician, cannot perform, then I don't feel as bad about being all "Sorry, but I can't treat this." But if suddenly all medical staff were (supposedly) able to do all surgeries, then a whole load of the play-to-win players that you mentioned really wouldn't take no as an answer. Not to mention that while those of us in medbay now might know and see it as acceptable to RP your super-doctor as a less-than-super-doctor, but what about when someone new looks to join? If you read the wiki page on medical for the first time and see that all the roles can do everything, you probably wouldn't ever think to do so. And if you're going to say on the wiki "Feel free to not be good at everything." then why don't you just stick with different roles like we have now? All in all, I can't see this doing anything other than feeding certain parts of the community reasons to get annoyed when they can't get medical treatment.

[Carver]

In the vein of having less people to say no to surgeries, I view that as an incredible improvement in cases like lowpop where Medical previously may not have had a surgeon - and where only immediate surgery (or advanced chems but that's another topic) could save someone from death due to the strict insanity of nu-Baymed.

[CatsinHD]

8 hours ago, Carver said:

In the vein of having less people to say no to surgeries, I view that as an incredible improvement in cases like lowpop where Medical previously may not have had a surgeon - and where only immediate surgery (or advanced chems but that's another topic) could save someone from death due to the strict insanity of nu-Baymed.

Physicians are allowed to perform the life saving surgeries according to the recently updated surgery wiki (assuming no surgeon is around).

https://wiki.aurorastation.org/index.php?title=Surgery