Build:Medical Systems
5.11 Medical Systems
(Required for most vessels)
5.11.1 Medical Facilities & Systems
(Required for most vessels)
Cost: 5 per rating (see table)
Power Requirement: 1 Power per rating per round
All but the smallest starships have sickbays and medical staffs devoted to preserving the health and well-being of the crew. Starship medical personnel and equipment stand ready to assist any crewman, regardless of his species, with any injury or medical problem. Sickbay equipment includes workstations, biobeds with diagnostic monitors, an overhead sensor cluster and generators to create force fields which are used to contain biohazards and create sterile operating environments. If necessary, doctors can attach surgical support frames to the biobeds.
Sickbay facilities typically include the reception area; main patient ward; critical care/triage area; physical therapy room, primary, overflow and biohazard intensive care units (ICUs); a trauma statis unit; a surgical suite or suites; offices; laboratory facilities and observation areas for patients needing special environments (such as zero gravity). Smaller vessels may not have the full range of facilties, or must make due with smaller ones.
The extent and quality of a starship’s medical systems and personnel is determined by its Medical rating. The higher the Medical Rating, the more extensive (and sophisticated) its facilities, and the better trained and more experienced its personnel are likely to be. The accompanying table provides Medical rating specifics, as well as SUs occupied.
The higher a ship’s Medical rating, the more likely it is to have the full range of personnel, facilities, and equipment discussed above. There are no hard and fast rules for which types of equipment and facilities are available for a given rating, though—Star Fleet is flexible, and will rearrange medical systems to suit specific mission profiles or the desires of medical personnel, as appropriate. As always, the Narrator may make whatever changes he sees fit. Likewise, the number of personnel assigned to the Medical department varies from ship to ship and situation to situation; no hard and fast numbers apply. Narrators may use the crew figures listed on the 5.3 Department Crew by Vessel Category table and apply those percentages to the ship’s crew to determine exactly how many doctors are aboard if necessary.
Klingon: Klingon ships have shockingly poor medical facilities—Star Fleet and Romulan officers consider them primitive and crude. For cultural reasons, the Klingons have never developed their medical science to the extent other species have; they prefer to rely on their natural toughness (including brak’lul, or vital organ duplication). They expect an injured warrior to bear the pain of his wounds and continue to perform his duty properly in spite of them. Klingon facilities have few resources for treating patients of other species.
Klingon ships rarely have Medical ratings above 4 or 5. Only ships that transport important officials or which see a lot of combat (by Klingon standards) have ratings of 6 or 7. Klingon ships other than dedicated Medical vessels (of which the Empire has few) cannot have Medical ratings higher than 7.
Table
| Rating | SUs | Medical Skill Capacity |
EMK | EMH | Year |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 5 | 10 | 50% | No | |
| 2 | 10 | 15 | 58% | No | 2087 |
| 3 | 15 | 25 | 58% | No | 2141 |
| 4 | 20 | 35 | 67% | No | 2215 |
| 5 | 25 | 45 | 67% | No | 2241 |
| 6 | 30 | 55 | 75% | No | 2255 |
| 7 | 35 | 65 | 75% | No | 2270 |
| 8 | 40 | 75 | 75% | Yes* | 2296 |
| 9 | 45 | 85 | 75% | Yes* | 2310 |
| 10 | 50 | 95 | 75% | Yes* | 2325 |
The Rating indicates the level of medical technology installed within the medical facility, while SUs indicates the amount needed to install a medical facility with that rating.
The Medical Skill Capacity (MSC) indicates the chance of success for treating critical injuries most commonly experienced onboard starships. For other medical assignments, the determination of difficulty dictates how the MSC is modified. Those deemed as Easy have the MSC multiplied by 3 (totaling no more than 95), Moderate multiplied by 2, Difficult as displayed and Very Difficult with the MSC divided by 2 (no lower than 05).
EMK indicates the percentage chance that an Emergency Medical Kit is located in any given space, when needed.
EMH lists whether or not an Emergency Medical Hologram may be installed. If the Rating is 8, 9 or 10, the EMH may only be installed after the year 2370. More information follows in the Emergency Medical Hologram entry.
Information regarding medical facility manning numbers is provided earlier, but the following guidelines apply: divide the number of medical personnel by 10 to get the number of medical teams onboard. One of the team is the doctor, while the others are either surgical or medical nurses or emergency response corpsmen. With a separate roll for each patient, each medical team can save 1 critically injured patient every hour and stabilize for surgery another 14 patients for one hour. If the medical team fails the surgical roll for the one patient or fails the stabilization roll for any of the waiting patients, that one targeted patient dies. When dividing the medical staff into teams of 10, any remaining personnel count as nurses, whom can stabilize up to two patients apiece.
Example: The ship has 52 medical personnel assigned. Dividing that by 10 shows that the ship has 5 medical teams, with five doctors and 47 nurses & corpsmen, 2 of whom are extra and help stabilize two patients each.
Cardassian: Medical systems on Cardassian ships, other then Medical Cruisers, rarely exceed rating 6.
5.11.2 Emergency Medical Holograms
Cost: 5 for EMH Mark I, 15 for EMH Mark II, 18 for EMH Mark III and 20 for EMH Mark IV
Power Requirement: 2 Power per round for EMH Mark I; 4 for Mk II; 5 for Mk III; 6 for Mk IV
Available: 2371
Beginning in 2371, Star Fleet started to equip its most sophisticated ships with a new medical system called the Emergency Medical Hologram (EMH). The EMH is a holographic doctor. Its memory contains the sum of the Federation’s medical knowledge—50 million gigaquads of information from 3,000 cultures, 2,000 medical texts, 47 physicians’ personal experiences, and five million possible treatments. It can provide routine and complex medical care, up to and including detailed surgery, in the event that a ship’s doctor is incapacitated.
An EMH system requires sophisticated holoemitters and sensors in the appropriate areas; Star Fleet can install one only on ships with the most sophisticated medical facilities, as indicated on the Medical Rating table. For the EMH Mark I, emitters are only installed in sickbay, requiring the sick and injured to go there for treatment. In 2375, Star Fleet created an EMH Mark II for ships, such as the Prometheus class, which have holoemitters throughout the vessel. A Mark II EMH can go wherever on its ship it is needed. In 2376, the Mark III and Mark IV EMHs became available. See the following table for the medical skill equivalent of the specific type of EMH. EMHs can operate on two critically-injured patients an hour (i.e., roll for each after 30 minutes) or can stabilize 14 patients; it cannot do both surgery and stabilization.
Table
| EMH | Year | Medical Skill Capacity |
Time |
|---|---|---|---|
| Mark I | 2371 | 75 | 12 hours |
| Mark II | 2375 | 85 | 1 day |
| Mark III | 2376 | 95 | 1 day |
| Mark IV | 2376 | 95 | 5 days |
The Mark IV (also referred to as the Long-term Medical Hologram or LMH) differs from the Mark III in that it can operate for much longer periods of time before requiring shutdown and maintenance. For all EMHs, the minimum shutdown period is 12 hours. EMHs that are used past this time can result in serious programming corruption at random intervals (5% roll for every day past the established time). If that occurs, a complete reboot of the system is required (setting the EMH back to initial installation standards).
(Cardassian: The Cardassians do not possess Emergency Medical Hologram technology.)
(Klingon: The Klingons do not have EMH technology; they consider it foolish.)
(Romulan: The Romulans have created their own version of EMH technology, but have not yet installed it on more than a few testbed ships. Romulan personnel seem much less sanguine about trusting their medical care to a “machine” than Star Fleet crewmembers.)
SFC Technology Index
Medical Facilities & System ratings represent more of a medical capacity than a standardized care system. As such, Medical Facilities & Systems have no index.
Emergency Medical Holograms: