MEDICAL TRAINING

Welcome to Starfleet Academy Cadets. This is a guide to Academy Cadets who who are interested in pursuing the career of an RPG Medical Officer. 

Being a Medical Officer is an exciting job, one that you will always be proud to complete. As a Medical Officer you will:

*  Be in command of all the Medical resources aboard you ship.

*  Be relied on in situations where the lives of the crew, and yours will depend on your ability, skill, and ingenuity to save the day.

*  Go on away teams, explore strange new worlds, seek out new life, deal with unknown diseases, see wonders and maybe create new procedures for the Medical community. 

*  Many good Captains, and First Officers were originally Medical officers.  Your skills can put you in charge of teams and sometimes bring your character to the forefront of a main plotline.

The course will be broken down in to several lessons containing valuable information:

1.  Medical Knowledge

2.   Standard Ship duties

3.   Away Team Duties

4.   Use of Non-Player Characters or NPCs

5.   Interacting With Other Players

             6.   Open-ended posting

             7.   Closing

I would like to start off by saying that you don’t need to be a doctor to play one on Federation Space.  As a player you are not expected to quote medical knowledge, theory, or hypotheses.  Although, to quote the old saying,” A little knowledge goes along way.”  This is true for you as a player. If you can give the impression that you know what you’re talking about, then you will be ok. Besides, much of your medical scans and results will be posted by a GM (Game Moderator) or your CO (Commanding Officer). If you run into trouble and can’t think of the correct way to state something or you can’t find the right techno-babble phase, you can always ask a GM, your CO, or even another player. 

As for the second part of the lesson, Technical Knowledge, once again you don’t need to know how everything works.  Once again, if you can describe what you’re doing and if you play it like you know what you’re talking about, then you will be fine. There is a vast amount of information on the Internet, and is easily accessible.  Also, there is a Surgeon General Homepage here on Federation Space that will answer many questions you might have. It is located at this link. Surgeon General Homepage

As a Medical Officer aboard a starship, you will have certain duties.  First of all, you will be responsible for the gathering of Medical data and the conduction of experiments using that data. There may be times when you will be required to save the ship and the lives of the crew.  If there is an airborne virus floating around the ship, it will be up to you to come up with a cure for it, or a way to neutralize it. 

Also as a Medical Officer you don’t sit around waiting for something that requires your attention to come to you, you search it out. Experiments are constantly being conducted in Sickbay, and there is always someone being injured by themselves, or the GM.  If nothing comes your way, you can always run experiments, or do some character development.  

Sometimes in order to complete your mission, an away mission will be necessary.  Depending on the parameters of the away mission, a Medical Officer will sometimes be needed.  In these situations, the Medical Officer would beam down and perform his tasks as he would aboard the ship. These include:

Watching for anything that might be dangerous and performing the duties assigned to you by the away team leader. A few important notes regarding away missions:

1.    You will not accompany every away mission.

2.    A standard medkit should always accompany you. It contains a medical tricorder, some basic hyposprays with drugs, a tourniquet and dermal regenerator.

An important aspect of role-playing is your use and interaction with NPCs. There are hundreds of officers and enlisted personnel aboard a starship, but there are only so many PC's (Player Characters).  In addition to playing your character, you are allowed to play NPC's.  They can be extremely useful in role-playing. You are restricted to playing 1 PC, but you can play as many NPC's as you want, or as your CO allows you to.  The nice thing about NPC's is that you are not restricted to playing an NPC in your department. If you choose to, you can play one in another department as long as you have the Department Head's permission to do so. NPC's allow you to display your depth of knowledge and bring some excitement to the game. More information will be given regarding NPC's at Starfleet Academy.

NPC's can be up to one rank higher than your PC, upon approval of your CO.
 

During your time on the site, however long it maybe, you will be required to interact with the other players on your ship.  In reality, there may be 10+ players on your ship.  The players and their departments will be required to work together to complete the mission and survive. Lets face it; in reality not everyone will be friendly, and you will have problems with others. This can be a good way to develop your character and create sub-plots. You may also develop meaningful  friendships with the other players on your ship. To develop your characters, you two may decide to “pretend” to have problems with one another. If this is case, be sure that you discuss it with each other first so that you don’t create a real problem between the two. Remember, the point of role-playing is to have run.

When posting make sure that you post open-ended. This means that when you post, make sure that you allow others to interact with your posts. Remember; don’t solve everything with one post. You want to allow for everyone to get into the game and have fun.

As a Medical officer, you will be making an important contribution to the success of the mission. Don’t worry if you don’t know everything there is to know about medicine, you will pick up a lot as your go. Good luck and welcome to Federation Space!

The information contained on this page was created exclusively for the Federation Space RPG. Please do not copy this information without permission. Simply email  President Jon Beckett, for permission to use any information contained on Federation Space. engineering, engineering, engineering, engineering, engineering, tactical, tactical, tactical, tactical, starfleet, starfleet, starfleet, starfleet, starfleet, star fleet, star fleet, star fleet, star fleet, star fleet, medical, medical, medical, medical, medical, science, science, science, science, science, academy, academy, academy, academy, academy, ship, ship, ship, ship, ship, federation, federation, federation, federation, federation, instructor, instructor, instructor, instructor, instructor, dean, dean, dean, dean, dean, commandant, commandant, commandant, commandant, commandant, superintendent, superintendent, superintendent, superintendent, superintendent, classes, classes, classes, classes, classes, class, class, class, class, class, courses, courses, courses, courses, courses, training, training, training, training, training.