Участник:Firost

Diagnostics

Medical care is serious business. Going halfway with your medical treatments, or just not being fast enough to identify and treat a problem, can easily result in the patient dying.

Lucky for you, this guide is here to make sure that doesn't happen. Pay attention to what you read here, because you'll need to be able to identify it quickly and definitively once you're in the actual game. After all, identifying the problem is the first step to solving it.

Diagnostic Tools

There are a variety of handy tools available to medical personnel. Learning what information can be gathered from each, and what you most need to know, is key to quickly and accurately diagnosing patients.

Your Eyes

This is something that a surprising number of players, even experienced ones, tend to forget. Simply looking at a patient by Shift + Clicking on them can tell you a surprising amount about their condition. If they have any visible injuries, you'll be able to see them immediately. You'll also be able to spot any bullets, shrapnel, or other foreign bodies lodged in their various soft fleshy bits, and identify any joints that have been dislocated. You'll rarely get all the information that you need from just looking at someone, but it's still an important step that should not be forgotten.

Health Analyzer

The health analyzer is the medic's best friend. Clicking on a patient with this in hand will give you a short readout of their condition, like so:

From top to bottom, the results are:

1. Brain Activity: Ranges from normal to extremely weak (not counting "None", which indicates brain death). A rough measure of the brain's integrity levels.
2. Pulse Rate: The current heart rate. Anything above roughly 120 bpm indicates stress and pain; 250 bpm or higher indicates that the patient's heart is close to failing.
3. Blood Pressure: The norm for most patients (READ: healthy humans, not FBPs or IPCs) will be roughly 120/90. Anything below that generally indicates blood loss. Also on this line is the patient's Blood Oxygenation, which is a combination of "how much blood do they have?", "are the lungs supplying oxygen?", and "is the heart working properly?". Anything below 100% indicates either blood loss, lung failure, or heart damage.
4. Body Temperature: Usually about 38C or 98F (again, for healthy humans). Anything substantially higher or lower indicates some sort of problem, though this is usually useless information; anything that would alter the patient's temperature leaves more obvious clues than that which allow you to reach a diagnosis.
5. Radiation Levels: A measure of how many points of radiation the patient has accumulated. Radiation is extremely dangerous, as it will cause toxins to rapidly build up in the subject's blood and can result in widespread organ failure very quickly, even at moderate doses.
6. Specific Limb Damage: This is where you get a readout of what obvious external injuries, such as burns and cuts, the patient has. These are the places that need to be bandaged, salved, or otherwise treated with basic medical supplies. This will also let you know if any limbs are bleeding externally, and need to be bandaged to prevent blood loss. Damage listed as "irreparable" is beyond your ability to treat. These limbs will need to be amputated and replaced.
7. Reagent Scan: The scanner can also tell you how many units of medication the patient has in their bloodstream, as well as any medications they may have swallowed. It will also let you know if there are non-medical things circulating in the patient's system, though it can't identify them.
8. Fractures, Internal Bleeding, and Systemic Organ Failure: The hand scanner will let you know if the patient has any of these severe conditions, though it won't be able to tell you details like which organs have failed or which arteries are bleeding. If you see any of these, take the patient to the Advanced Body Scanner immediately to see how bad things really are.

The Advanced Body Scanner

The Advanced Body Scanner is a more heavy-duty version of your handheld health analyzer. It's bolted to the floor in the Treatment Center, and patients have to be loaded into it by hand (either grab the patient and click on the scanner or click and drag from someone onto it). Once someone is inside, clicking on the readout panel will tell you everything that the handheld scanner does, but with a greater level of detail. You can use this to identify failing or damaged organs, broken bones, severed arteries, illicit implants, genetic degradation, or anything else that the handheld scanner can't identify on its own.

You can also print out sheets of paper containing the patient's full readout, which is very important when you need to perform Surgery.

The Medical HUD

Medical as a division has access to special HUD glasses which will tell you, at a glance, a few vital things about a patient.

Medical HUD Readouts

Color	Description	In-game definition	Real world treatment type	Suggested in-game treatment
Black	Patient is dead	Patient is braindead. No brain activity.	Remove to prevent infections	Ignore until all live patients dealt with, then take to morgue.
Red	Patient is seriously injured and in danger of dying, or just flatlined recently	Critical condition (asystole, heart stopped) Very low blood counts Quickly dropping vitals Organ damage to vital organs (brain/heart/lungs) Late stages of bacterial infection Lethal disease in late stages	Immediate treatment	Treat their condition as quickly as possible. If unable to treat immediately (OR busy, no vaccine), put them in a stasis bag until they can be helped. For diseases, inject Spaceacillin to stop progress. Stabilize all critical patients before proceeding with in-depth treatment, restart their heart with Defibrillator as soon as they can sustain the heartbeat.
Yellow	Patient is injured, but not in immediately life-threatening danger	Bone fractures Minor organ damage Bleeding or infected (early stage) wounds Potentially lethal disease in its early stages	Delayed treatment	Treat as soon as all red triage patients are stabilized.
Green	Patient has light injuries, with no bleeding.		Minimal treatment	Ignore until the last of the yellow triage patients have been taken care of.
White	Patient is uninjured		There is no reason to treat them when you have a million more seriously wounded people	Ignore until all green triage patients have been taken care of.

The Stethoscope and Penlight

These are two medical diagnostic tools with extremely niche applications, but they can be handy in identifying odd or elusive conditions.

The stethoscope can be worn on your jumpsuit as an attached accessory. When you need to use it, hold it in your hand, target your patient's chest, and click on them with the Help intent. This will allow you to identify any issues with the heart or lungs.

The penlight can be stored in your medical belt. When needed, click on it in your hand to turn on the light, target your patient's eyes, and click on them with the Help intent. This will allow you to monitor the reaction time of their pupils, which, if slower than usual, can indicate brain damage, intoxication via alcohol or drugs, viral infection, or genetic degradation.

Your Hands

If, for some reason, you're stuck out in the field with none of your normal diagnostic tools available, you'll have to make do with what you can tell by touch. Fortunately, you can tell more that way than most people would expect. After grabbing a patient, target a part of their body and click on them with the Help intent to inspect that piece. This will provide you with a variety of information tidbits about that specific limb's condition, which can be useful in diagnosing a variety of things.

Triage, Retrieval, and Critical Patients

Triage is the art of quickly diagnosing multiple patients and prioritizing care towards those with the most pressing need. Basically, when you have multiple patients, look over each of them as quickly as you can and figure out which of them, if any, need treatment right the hell now, and focus care on them. This is a vital skill during emergency situations, but even with only one or two patients to look at, being able to determine within a few seconds whether or not their condition is particularly serious is a vital skill, particularly for Corpsman players, who will often be called upon to exercise this skill in the field while retrieving patients for transport to the Infirmary.

This relies, obviously, on your ability to quickly and accurately diagnose patients, so familiarize yourself with the diagnostic tools covered above and learn how to read them. Once you know how to identify what is wrong with each patient, it becomes a matter of prioritizing.

Any patient undergoing cardiac arrest, suffering from internal bleeding, with ruptured lungs, or experiencing organ failure needs immediate treatment. Whether or not any of these things are true, though, the basic idea behind triage is this:

1. Examine each potential patient as quickly as possible, and form a diagnosis of each.
2. Sort each patient from most critical to least critical.
3. Stabilize the most critical patients, if possible, and send them to the more specialized Physicians, if available, for complete treatment.
4. Work your way down the list, stabilizing and directing each patient to the appropriate Physician, until no patients remain.

When working as a Corpsman in the field, this will include the additional step of retrieving the patients for transport to the Infirmary. When dealing with injured patients in the field, after performing triage and selecting your priority cases:

1. Remove yourself and the patient from the source of the injury, whether it be a space carp, phoron-saturated clothing, or a murderous traitor. Adding yourself to the list of casualties won't help anyone.
2. Stabilize the patient to the best of your ability before transporting them. Failing to do this may result in patient death during transport. Dexalin Plus, Tramadol, Inaprovaline, bandages, and so on are all helpful in this regard; prioritize stopping any external bleeding, preserving oxygen flow to the brain, and preventing the onset of shock.
3. If a patient cannot be stabilized in the field, placing them in a stasis bag will allow for safe transport to the Infirmary while preventing their injuries from worsening.
4. If the patient can be stabilized, use a roller bed to transport them to Medbay. Dragging them can result in further injury. If no roller beds are available, GRAB them and move.