Command has noticed an increase in fatalities recently. We’ve had marines with their cause of death identified as “Tricordrazine Overdose” far too often. This guide, written by Falling Falcon Delta Medic, Corporal Tracee Parker, should assist in reducing easily preventable fatalities. This guide assumes a basic knowledge of medicine. The floor is yours, Corporal.
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‘SUP FUCKOS!
Right, so you’ve woken up with the fucking red cross on your shirt. Congratulations! You’re a medic, and if you have my luck, you're the only one in your squad! Come dive in to the hellscape that is treating these idiots with me. Remember, they might not be smart, well trained, or have basic common sense, but they stand between you and the other guy’s gun.
Loadout
After you stuffed your face with enough protein bars to feed a third world country, you’re off to your prep room. Put everything on in the locker except the rig. The rig is for nerds, and you’re no nerd. THIS MEANS THE HELMET IF I SEE A MEDIC OUT THERE WITH NO HELMET I WILL QC YOU INTO NEXT WEEK!
From the equipment vendor, you’ll want a Lifesaver Bag, a Satchel, a Webbing, a Medikit Pouch, and a Medical Pouch. Ditch your backpack. Quick access to medicine is important, and you probably won’t be carrying enough to need a backpack anyway. Grab all the advanced first aid kits, and put one in your pouch, and the other in your satchel. Take two defibs as well. You will run out of charge at the worst possible time. Take two. Next, all the basic first aid kits, and empty one out. Take all the syringe cases, and empty those out too. You’ll be using them later. Put one of the scanners in your medical pouch.
Head over to the medicine vendor. From your lifesaver bag, return the dylovene and kelotane injectors. They are both worthless. The only way you’re going to get poisoned on an op is from drinking too much alcohol, or an infected wound. If they’re drunk on op, they deserve to die anyway. Fuck ‘em. If it’s an infection, you can treat infected wounds with an Advanced Trauma Kit (ATK). The kelotane injectors are simply too weak. Also return your ointments. Replace them with the following pill bottles: Two Bicaridine, Two Kelotane, one Dexalin and one Inaprovaline. Take two tramadol pill bottles and put them in your medical pouch. You now have one spare space in your lifesaver bag, which you can fill with anything. I personally take an extra splint, because you guys keep shooting each other and breaking bones. But an extra dexalin+ injector or an ATK are also good ideas. Next, take all 5 inaprovaline, tricordrazine, and Quick Clot injectors. Put one of each in your four syringe cases, which then all go in medkit. You’ll have one of each left now, and they go loose in the medkit. Put a spaceacillin pill bottle and a stasis bag in your webbing, then screech at the medical staff until they give you peridaxon. If peridaxon is illegal, don’t steal it.
For your weapon, take whatever. You know what you’re good at, and seeing as you have to read my guide, it’s probably nothing. I personally take a shotgun loaded with buckshot. For attachments I take a gyro, and a mag harness. As a medic with this loadout, you will only be carrying one weapon. No sidearm. So the mag harness is vital. The gyro allows you to protect marines as you drag them. If you can’t get a gyro, maybe grab an SMG instead. Put your spare ammo in your armour. YES YOUR ARMOUR CAN STORE MAGS AND SHELLS STOP LEAVING IT EMPTY. Put two protein bars in your helmet. Done.
Treatment
First of all, there should only be one medic treating a marine at a time. Too many medics on one patient leads to those tricordrazine overdoses we’ve been trying to avoid. Drag your patients away from other medics. If you must work with another medic, COMMUNICATE. Tell them which drugs you are putting in, or you will overdose them. Ideally, one of you will treat with trauma packs and burn kits, while the other handles drugs. Privates, if you’ve made it this far into the guide without getting bored: DO NOT SELF TREAT WITH DRUGS. Bandage your bleeding wounds and give yourself a tram injection, but don’t eat floor pills, don’t grab trico injectors off the ground. We’re the ones who barely get paid to treat you, so don’t fuck it up for us.
Now, I assume you all know which medicines heal what, so we’ll skip that. I have neither the patience nor crayons to explain that to you, so just read this: wiki/Guide_to_Medicine#Medicine.
The first thing we want to do when a marine comes in is scan them and try to identify anything that could kill them. This could be a punctured lung, internal bleeding, or excessive bleeding. Deal with that first. If they are showing oxygen damage, and high chest damage, THEY HAVE A PUNCTURED LUNG. Give them some peridaxon, and a dexalin pill. Save your Dex+ injectors for defibbing (more on that later). Internal bleeding is a bitch, but is also something we can work with. If they have internal bleeding, follow this procedure:
1. Use your ATKs to treat their external bleeding.
2. Inject them with one dose of Quick Clot.
3. Repeat step 1.
Quick Clot causes bleeding, and reopens wounds, but DOESN’T UNDO THE WORK YOU DID WITH THE ATKs BEFORE. This allows you to rapidly treat brute damage.
Next, treat the damage itself with your pills. One pill of the relevant damage type should do it, along with a tramadol to get them moving again. Finally, splint the broken bones. Ribs and skull are very high priority, as their movement can cause further damage. Broken bones in the chest can cause a punctured lung if the marine moves around too much. If they’ve broken 2-3 bones, their speed is reduced significantly, and the chance of a splint coming undone mid combat is too high. Evac them. Warn your marine to stay away from combat while the drugs work, then watch them run off into combat, as gracefully as a mentally damaged gazelle.
Remember that your ATKs and burn kits are very valuable. Don’t just use them on a marine coming in with a stubbed toe. If they’re below about 30 damage, give them a pill, a slap on the butt, and send them on their way. For bonus points, if it’s below 15, tell them to get fucked. You are not there to kiss scraped knees. If you run out of supplies, your squad is now without a medic.
Increasing the volume of a drug in your patient’s system does NOT speed up treatment, HOWEVER, multiple drugs treating the same effect does, such as tricordrazine and bicaridine, or kelotane and dermaline, hence the often requested KeloDerm. The OD listed on the official USCM medicine guide shared above is the LOWER LIMIT. If someone has 30u of tricordrazine in their system, for example, it will tick almost immediately to 29, and no longer be ODing. So don't flip your shit if you see it. 45u however will fuck someone up.
Defibrillator
Right, let’s get the basic shit out of the way. The defib will bring marines back to life if they are below 200 damage. Each hit with the defib heals about 5 damage. If the defib says that your patient is braindead, MOVE ON. They’re dead, gone, bleeding demised, pushing up the daisies, they are an ex-marine. No amount of defibrillator can help them now. Remember to take the armour off. You don't need to strip them completely, just their armour. And if you zap them too much, their heart will take too much damage and you won't be able to revive them at all. That shouldn't happen if you follow this guide, but keep it in mind.
RIGHT! A PFC drags a marine in from the front. He’s dead. Time to get to work. First, scan them. You need to know what you’re dealing with. If they are close to or below 200 damage already, hit them with the defib. There is only a certain amount of time we have to work with the defibrillator, and it resets if they’re brought back, even for a second. If your patient comes back, then immediately dies again, you’ve still done something very valuable in resetting that timer. Now comes the actual treatment.
It’s a lot like treating a living marine, really. Identify anything that could kill them immediately upon waking up. This is USUALLY a punctured lung. So splint that chest, give them the peridaxon, and a dexalin+ injector. Then treat internal bleeding, if there is any. Same process as before, but use all the injectors in one of those syringe cases I had you prepare earlier. FINALLY, give your patient one dose of the most relevant injury. If they got clawed or shot to death, give them a bicard pill. If they got burned, give them kelotane. And now, defib them. They’ll wake up, the drugs will get to work, they’ll be fine. But if they died from brute, they’ll probably need to medi-evac from massive amounts of broken bones or missing limbs.
If you see them die in front of you, you can skip resetting the timer. No need to reset the timer if you know the timer has only just started.
Behaviour on the field
Remember, you are better than everyone, especially the other medics. Let them know it.
The most vital thing to remember is that you are not there to fight. Your gun is to protect you if shit hits the fan. Don’t run out to join a firing line. Stay in cover, don’t wander too far from the others. If possible, attach yourself to a smartgunner so they can protect you.
Communicate with the medical staff on the Almayer about what sort of injuries you have coming up. This is technically the PO’s job, but they’re notoriously bad at it. The doctors need to know if they need to print new limbs, get the rollers to the door, or prepare extra medicine. It also helps if they like you, because they give you cool shit like keloderm and peridex+.
When shit hits the fan and you’re up to your waist in dying marines, don’t panic. Work on a priority system.
Medics > Squad Leaders and Specialists > Smartgunners > Engineers > PFCs > Command Staff.
If you have wounded medics, get them on their feet ASAP. They can help you. Squad leaders and specialists have things that make big boom, so get them stable and don’t let them die. Same with the smartgunners. If shit has hit the fan, your engineers aren’t going to have much time to set up defenses, so really they’re about equal with the PFCs. Command Staff is last because fuck command.
Remember, you don’t need to get everyone to 100%. Once they’re stable, you can turn to work on others. The important thing is to stop people from going braindead. Once everyone is alive, then you can get to work on getting them back in the fight.
Finally, you shouldn’t be dragging wounded back to the shuttle for evac. That is a PFC job. You need to stay there to treat people. Give the PFC a roller bed, and send them on their way. Threats of violence should move the process along.
Congratulations! You finished reading this guide and are now hopefully a good enough medic! Or you skipped to the end, and you’re an idiot. The important thing is, there’s now no excuse.
-Tracee <3 XOXOXOXOXO
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Medical changes have made this guide out of date.
