Medic

Medic is a skill based on brains.

Medic is a very useful skill used to remedy anything from healthbar scrapes to massive brain damage to literally being dead. Medic skill also applies to two specific weapons, the Sonic Scalpel and Liston Knife. This page covers basic doctoring; for more specific knowledge, relevant reading includes Diseases and Afflictions, Health, Mental illness and Drugs. The best teacher of all is field experience; get out there, treat (or sustain!) some nasty wounds and learn a thing or two!

Note that performing any medical operation on someone who isn't unconscious requires them to allow medic from <you>.

Diagnosis

To get in-depth information on someone using your medic skill, use diag(nose). This will give you a multi-line readout on whoever you're diagnosing.

 diag Miyako
 
 In your educated opinion...
 Miyako has no injuries.
 Miyako is sexually aroused.
 Miyako is deprived of food by about 91 units.
 Miyako is deprived of water by about 1 units.
 Miyako really has to pee.

If there are other relevant status effects, like having a groin pull or a broken arm, they're also displayed here. They'll also sometimes include treatment suggestions, like "You could fix it with an allomycin hypo." Some diag messages are more cryptic or vague - interpreting them is up to your game knowledge! Diag still has no cost or cooldown, and you only need 9 medic skill to diag yourself.

Diag will never work on someone with Enigma. If someone takes Enigma, it is their responsibility to have good knowledge of the game's medical system even if they have low medic skill, and tell friendly medics what treatment they require.

Healing

Losing health is bad. Reach zero health, and you die. To avoid that, patch up other people's healthbars and yourself up with the following methods:

• Trauma Kits are cheap and available in lots of stores. They heal a certain amount over time, every heartbeat; the healing amount scales with your medic skill and peters down over time.
  • Trauma kits can be combined, which saves some inventory space. You can only combine medium and medium kits or large and large kits; they can't mix.
  • If you want to replace bandages on someone for a higher heal, unband them using a suture kit. This doesn't take a suture kit charge. If your medic skill is too low you'll damage your patient in the process! This feature is not available in Samsara.
• Nanite healers don't use the Medic skill; see here.
• Mediguns are craft-only and require good medic skill to use, but heal for huge amounts very quickly, and have an ubercharge function that lets them buff the dodge of their target. Everyone loves a good medigun medic, except for the already-dead. You can't heal yourself with a medigun, and they require charge to function.

Status Effects

Various status effects can afflict you and your friends. Many of them are very specific, obscure, or even spoilers, but here are a few common ones:

• Bleeding drains your healthpool periodically. People with Superclot will never bleed; for everyone else, use a suture kit to patch the wounds. Requires about 10 medic skill for consistent success. Improvised rolls of bandages also work; they're slower, but they don't require medic skill.
• Broken bones can show up in the jaw, arm and leg. Fix them with an insta-cast. Requires about 15 medic for consistency.
• Black lung requires an allomycin hypo to fix. There are many other viral infections treatable with allomycin, viromycin, or fungilex; diag will usually give you a hint on this. All require about 15 medic for consistent success.
  • For more information on various horrible diseases, see Diseases and Afflictions.
• Radiation poisoning is fixed with a rad detox kit, which requires about 16 medic for consistency.
• Being dead is fixed with a portable defibrillator, and requires about 16 medic for consistent success. Defibrillators require charge.
  • If you die, don't scream in panic over corpnet. You have several minutes before you're beyond saving. Defibrillation will never succeed if the deceased disconnects from the server while dead or leaves limbo ("goes up"), however.
  • People who have been fatalitied (big red wall of text upon death) can never be defibbed. Same goes for people blown to bits or decapitated.
  • When you resurrect someone with a defib, any status effects they died with will be retained, so make sure to patch up bleeding lest they bleed to death again. They also revive with one healthpoint and some stat penalties, so they're very vulnerable.
• Being unconscious is fixed with an adrenaline hypo, though it seldom lasts long enough for anyone to bother. This does comes in handy for dream-chairs and sleeping shopkeepers.
• Brain damage is fixed with a brain surgery kit, purchased in Maas Neotek for $3500 (or crafted). Lower totals can get away with spam, but 21 or more is best for consistent success.
• Groin pulls, caused by overt muscle strain, can be fixed with a groinex nanopoultice. This requires about 15 medic.

First aid kits can be bought in some stores, and can fix groin pulls, bleeds and broken bones all in one. As a trade-off, they take much longer to apply (more than long enough for a bleed to tick). Most of the supplies listed above can be purchased in Meds 4 Less in Freedom City, Mercy Shoppes in Weezer, and other scattered medical shops.

Miscellaneous Medic Uses

The medic skill is sometimes used for things that aren't healing people, such as...

• Two weapons, the sonic scalpel and the Liston knife. Some people make entire builds around the unsoakable scalpels.
• Implant removal, conducted using the Implomatic on the top floor of the hospital in Slagtown. This requires 26+ medic for removal of implants with no risk of damage to said implant. The Implomatic can be used to install implants as well, but since it's so easy to use NPCs for that, nobody bothers.
• Psychoanalysis, used with the analyze command, is required to treat relatively rare mentals. See the relevant page for more information on those. You'll need extremely good medic (in the 40s) to treat very nasty mentals.
• Massages, given by anyone with the Empath or Nimble Fingers mutations (or anyone with a massage table). This is supposed to be a way of curing stress, but it's slow and carries the risk of causing muscle strain. Weed and scrimshaws are much better.
• Organ extraction for the Organ Repo job requires about 20 medic for consistent extraction, but it can be spammed with no downsides if you have less (and some patience).

Exceptions

Medic is all about fixing people, and people have lots of weird deviations that can throw you off:

• Enigma mutants cannot be diagnosed or psychoanalyzed. As mentioned earlier, it's the Enigma's job to tell you what their problems are and (if necessary) how to fix them, not your job to automatically know. Nobody likes a dumbnigma.
• Zombies cannot be healed with trauma kits, nanites, or mediguns - the only way they can heal is by eating heads. Status cleansing and the like works normally.
• Abominations can only be healed by freaks. They also can't be defibbed by anyone.
• Vampires are susceptible to mentals if they get hungry. Bleeding is also a more serious problem for them, since it actively increases their hunger as well as damaging them.
• Silicone Skin mutants take 20% less healing from trauma kits. All other healing sources work normally.
• Empaths have some special medical stuff, as well as an intrinsic bonus to medic. See the mutation page for more info.
• Camelfat mutants hang on to status effects like drugs and poison for longer, which means they can't just walk off their rads.
• Plant Whisperer mutants can catch a bunch of mutation-specific diseases. They're all fixed with a fungilex hypo.

Skills
Weapon Skills	Blades • Clubs • Fists • Flails • Medic • Pistols • Rifles • Science • Spears • Whips
Combat Skills	Bombs • Dodge • Focus • Quickdraw • Torture • Wrestle
Mobility Skills	Climb • Pilot • Ride • Swim
Support Skills	Hack • Locksmith • Medic • Repair • Teach • Track
Crafting Skills	Chemistry • Craft • Science
Miscellaneous Skills	Appraise • Fish • Fuck • Linguist • Persuade • Scavenge • Sneak • Throw