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Fire's thoughts and tips on being Chief Medical Officer


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I wrote this at the start of 2017 minus a few edits, but I believe everything in it still applies.


So I have been CMO for half a year or so, and came up with my own opinions towards playing it.


Stuff here can overlap with being a head of staff in general, but this is primarily focused on The Chief Of Medical.


Without further ado,


Tell everyone what they need to do. (to a reasonable degree)

Staff need to know what everyone else is doing, if they don't, this'll lead to two people trying to handle a one-man task, wasting time, paramedics and EMT's are meant to leave medical and bring back injured, surgeons are meant to do surgery, medical doctors are meant to handle most things in between, remind people of this when necessary, Of course there is overlap, but if both a medical doctor and a surgeon says "I'll handle it boss" when the Paramedic says they're bringing in someone with broken bones, make sure the surgeon is going to be doing the surgery.


You should also tell people where they need to be, even if they should (theoretically) know what's going on, this does two things.

  • It lets them know what they're supposed to be doing, doctors are not amazingly aware creatures, as supervisor you'll need to occasionally tell them what needs to be done, better safe than sorry.
  • It lets everyone else know what they are doing, telling someone to do something will generally prompt them to say "Doing it boss", this lets the rest of the medical staff know that someone is dealing with the problem and they are not needed.

 

Even if what you are saying sounds really obvious (person screams "MEDICAL HELP ME HERE" on radio, you instantly tell the paramedic to go there, medical doctor says "guy needs surgery", you tell the only surgeon to do it, etc) you should do it, because again, doctors aren't aware of everything or each other all the time.


Avoid doing things yourself when possible, your time is important.

The minute you start doing surgery, grab an EVA suit to drag someone out of a breach, or, god forbid, enter a 30 minute long RP checkup session with someone (that's what nurses are for), your ability to keep perspective on the situation is instantly skewered, delegate whenever possible, if you are incapable of effectively ordering your staff to deal with things as they arise, then you are no better than a medical doctor with extra access.


Of course you will always need to help out here and there, but entering a committed operation should be one of your last options, (worse options being recruiting non-medical crew to do it), factoring in urgency and proximity, luckily there are some useful things to use rather then having to deal with something yourself.

  • Your medical staff are versatile and tend to overlap with each other, this is a bit different now that the the medical reform is in action but basically, keep in mind that just because you do not have the specialist doesn't mean no one can do it.
  • Medical station-bound/cyborg units are exceptional generalists, use them, unlike crew which can get irritatingly distracted by other things, station-bounds scarcely have anything to do besides medical tasks, and you can order them to do a great many amount of tasks, ranging from chemistry to surgery, although they'll need a little help with surgery, medical units can even do a bit of paramedding outside of their specialised crisis units, you should generally try to use a medical station-bound before asking non-specialised medical staff to do something.
  • For a few, select tasks, you also have the AI, they can read medical records for you (don't tell them to read all of them), do a bit of assisted chemistry, observe the crew monitoring console, etcetera, the AI should be your last choice for anything however, as they are often distracted by other things.

 

Again, avoid committing to things yourself, a conversation with your favorite head of staff is fine, a psychiatric evaluation? Not so much, you can even ask assistants to fetch minor things for you instead of going out to get it yourself.


Keep in mind this is a rather cold approach to being a CMO and head of staff, I've seen other people play talkative and personable CMO's, I do not know how well that works but in my book, if you want to spend (lots of) time Roleplaying then you shouldn't be a playing a Head of Staff for that round, and of course this is all my own opinion and I'm a shit.

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