On Sat, 7 Dec 2019 07:10:37 +1000, Kenneth Barns <xxxxxx@gmail.com>
wrote to Freelance Traveller:

>Dear Jeff,
>
>Only briefly comment here because, as a emergency medicine doctor, I could
>really go down the rabbit hole here on RPG modelling of Medicine as a
>career, or of the pathophysiology of injury and illness.  (Closest I've
>seen is the work done in GURPS 4th ed BioTech.)
>
>A few points ...
>
>For role-playing purposes, Paramedicine makes much more sense as a career
>than Medicine itself.  I can see ambulance officers, nurses, army medics,
>etc, getting into typical PC mischief.  Properly qualified medical
>professionals?  Not so much.  (We tend to do quite well financially having

Point taken, and I'm hoping that Eric Rhude will contribute to the issue.
However... Herewith the first three paragraphs of the article:

In Traveller, the typical player-character that falls into the role of
party medic is simply the one that's managed to accumulate "Medical" skill
somewhere along the line - he/she/it is still an Army or Marine soldier, a
Navy spacer, a Scout, etc., first, and a doctor just by accident. But is
that realistic? Do the various armed forces grab J. Random Enlistee, and
teach him/her/it to be a doctor, or do they look for and recruit people who
have already trained to become doctors, and then teach them the basic
military skills that they will need in the service?

But then, what use, really, is a doctor in an adventure? How often is a
doctor going to be the central character in an adventure group of
player-characters? Isn't the doctor just someone that needs to be
protected, until someone gets injured, and then you use him as a DM for
getting the injured character back on his feet?

How unfair! There's really no reason that a doctor can't be a central
character in an adventure - consider the Sector General series of stories
by James White. Or consider what sort of things occasionally happen in the
real world where Doctors Without Borders and/or Mercy Ships (or similar
organizations) has a presence. Piers Anthony even wrote a story where a
dentist was the central character. Certainly, it takes an exceptional kind
of doctor to 'go out adventuring' rather than staying home on a nice safe
(mostly) world making good money telling concerned mothers that no, little
Johnny doesn't have the latest Virulent High-Mortality Galloping Crud, it's
just a normal Mostly Innocuous Apparent Crud, and it'll clear up on its
own. But then, Travellers in general are exceptional kinds of people
anyway, so why shouldn't we find doctors among them?

>nice, steady jobs and avoiding dangerous, erratic situations.)  A doctor
>serving a crew of 5-6?  A waste.  More realistic would be a nurse for
>passenger/crew manifest of 100 or more (and just someone with some
>certification if less than that), and a doctor once you get up over 1000.
>Even in the armed forces, the doctors are more likely to be found in field
>hospitals well behind the front lines.  As for "(medical) Researcher", just
>treat that as a subspecialty of "Scientist", rather than of Medicine.
>Full-time medically-trained researchers are quite rare, and are a very
>different beast to clinically-practising doctors.  Though, of course, many
>practising doctors also do some research on the side (in which case, treat
>that as a second career or dual-class).
>
>To keep it simple, the core skill of "Medical" would actually be
>"Diagnosis", which there would be various optional specialisations of.
>Treatment with medicine is pretty much a no-brainer once the correct
>diagnosis has been made, so for most medically-managed problems, the
>diagnosis and treatment roll are one and the same.  However, some
>conditions would need to be treated with "Procedures", with either
>mandatory specialisations, or separate skills: Surgery, Psychotherapy,
>Critical Care, Imaging (taking the pictures, not their interpretation,
>which is part of Diagnosis), etc.  Unless one has trained in that specific
>procedure, you just cannot offer it (or else will be practising it at a
>default-level skills ...).  Some of those Procedures may be offered by
>stand-alone paramedical professions who have only a passing familiarity
>with Diagnosis.  A "good doctor" would actually have very high levels of
>interpersonal skills (esp. Diplomacy and Teaching, though Fast-Talk is
>occasionally needed in emergency medicine!), rather than necessarily
>stellar levels of "Diagnosis" or "Procedures".  I have no idea who the
>"best surgeon" in my hospital is, though I can tell you who is the most
>thoughtful and considerate, and seems to be be most interested in his/her
>job!

Very useful information here; now, how can we turn it into a career (or
incorporate it into one)?

>As for (Dis-)Advantages, the only near-obligatory one would be some level
>of Wealth.  Mingling among a social circle that is mostly doctors, I can
>tell you that almost every A/D is on display there somewhere, but none of
>them are near universal (except 1-2 levels of Wealth), though Workaholic or
>Code of Honour might be close.  The suggestions in GURPS: Traveller are a
>reasonable start, though playing more to a stereotype than to reality
>(Disease Resistant, Pacificism, ...).

I'd gotten as far as "Code of Honor (Hippocratic Oath or equivalent)"
myself; the question was in fact motivated by a foggy idea of a
stereotype...

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