Hospital Corpsman

MARINE
Combat Medic	Difficulty: Medium Supervisors: Squad Leader Rank: Not defined Duties: Stabilise and keep your squad alive Guides: Guide to Medicine, Guide to Chemistry Unlock Requirements: Not available. Detailed Description: |__________| Not defined |__________|

If you insist. After my student years, despite the fact that I had become secretly addicted to morphine, I was considered to be most promising. A man with a future. Then during my first residency I did a thirty-six hour stretch on an ER. So I went out and I got more than a little drunk. Then I got called back. Boiler had blown on a fuel plant and there were thirty casualties. And eleven of them died. Not as a result of the accident but because I prescribed the wrong dosage of painkiller. And I got seven years in prison and my licence reduced to a 3C. [pause] At least I got off the morphine. - Clemens, Alien³

You are the Corpsman, in the middle of the chaos of the battlefield, you do not kill, but heal and keep people alive. You have a wide range of medical equipment and, perhaps, a trusty sidearm for when things get dangerous.

Combat Medic Overview

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Being a medic is stressful, confusing, and frustrating. You don't know surgery, a good part of your job is screaming at command to send the dropships for guys with fractures (everybody), you have to role play not knowing what the worm icon on your medic HUD is round after round, marines with their lungs dropping out of their chest will run away from you as you try to jab them with Quick Clot, and Marines will pull their wounded buddies to death trying to find you. And if, by God's great mercy, you see another medic doing their job, they're probably just ODing the critted marine on tricordazine. Fucking tricordazine. And yet, medics are absolutely vital to the Marine effort, and more importantly, vital to the quality of the round for every single Marine that heads to the planet.

Ultimately, your responsibility is to quickly and efficiently heal and get wounded Marines off the battlefield alive and help get them back into the battlefield as soon as possible. A dead Marine is no good to you or your squad. Depending on your skills, a competent field medic is worth upwards of a dozen Marines. It's the greatest feeling in Colonial Marines to know that a Marine would have died without you, that you went out of your way to save their life, and their round gets to continue.

You don't know how to perform a surgical operation. Improvised or not, you have no knowledge of surgery as you are a combat medic and not a field surgeon. Surgery is handled only by the trained Sulaco doctors.

Quick Start Guide

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You are equipped with a wide range of medical tools. Your equipment is located through the second door of your squad's prep room. It's got two marine lockers and a medical vendor. Prep for a medic should take a long time and don't feel bad about it. The medical vendor can get you all the basics. These items should be mandatory:

• Medical HUD (equip this to see every marine's health status at a glance)
• Medical encryption key (click it into your headset so you can communicate on the medical channel)
• Health analyzer (this goes in your pocket; you'll use it constantly to scan marines)
• Marine medical jumpsuit (identifies you as a medic to other marines)
• Combat lifesaver bag/belt (to carry all your goodies)

How do you know what else to take? It's very intimidating. Different medics will take different stuff. Don't be afraid to dump things you don't find useful. There's a simple poster on the wall in your prep room that outlines which medicines do what. Here's the basic structure, which should help you decide what to include in your inventory:

Treat injuries generally in the following order: Suffocation, Brute, Burn, Toxin, Fracture, Pain. (Check the chemistry link for OD limits.) To use medical supplies, hold the item in your active hand, have your help intent activated, and click on the marine you want to treat.

(1) SUFFOCATION (blue on the health analyzer)

• Treat with DEXALINE (30 units overdose)
• Treat with INAPROVALINE (60 units overdose)
• Do CPR if necessary (click with two empty hands)

(2) BRUTE (red on the health analyzer)

• Treat with TRAUMA KITS or GAUZE (prioritize bleeding; target the correct body part)
• Treat with BICARIDINE (30 units overdose)
• Or TRICORDAZINE (30 units overdose) treats damage more generally
• Treat with OINTMENT (target the right body part)

(3) BURN (orange on the health analyzer)

• Treat with ADVANCED BURN KIT or OINTMENT (target the right body part)
• Treat with KELOTANE (30 units overdose)
• Or DERMALINE (15 units overdose?)
• Or TRICORDAZINE (30 units overdose) treats damage more generally

(4) TOXIN (green on the health analyzer)

• Treat with DYLOVENE (30 units overdose?)

(5) FRACTURE

• Treat with SPLINTS (if it can't be splinted, get the marine to Sulaco's medbay)

(6) PAIN

• Treat with TRAMADOL (30 units overdose) or OXYCODONE (much stronger) (20 units overdose)

As a medic, you might also want to take multiple Medkits (basically boxes to store stuff and dramatically increase your carrying capacity), one or two stasis bags, and/or an emergency defibrillator for reviving marines that show up as dead (if you catch it fast enough, they're not really dead yet). You might also head to medbay and see if the doctors have made some goodies like PERIDAXON+ (repairs organ damage). The doctors are happy when you ask them what they're cooking up. The medbay lobby also has medic vendors. Perhaps wear a sterile mask from medbay storage for Marines to identify you more easily.

Weaponry and Combat

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You've traded combat for medicine. Equipped with all the tools for saving lives you won't have enough room to carry any heavy weaponry. Let the guys in your squad protect you. Medics typically equip the one handed M39 SMG. It has a slightly higher ammo count and can take down any smaller target in close range. The M39 SMG does slightly less damage per shot, but it can still be a reliable weapon in capable hands. It's practical to leave one hand free for saving lives.

Others recommend carrying no weapon. Why? Because it can distract you from your duty. Your primary job is to heal, not fight, and being in possession of anything that goes 'bang bang' is more than enough to distract you enough. Remember, the moment you see someone go down, you should drop everything and work on fixing him up. This should be your standard reaction in this situation. Of course, you can still carry a gun if you so wish. But carrying a gun can be a burden. Leave the shooting to the other classes and fix them up when they go down.

Medic Tips

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• DYLOVENE and INAPROVALINE mix to produce TRICORDAZINE. If a patient is given these two drugs, they may combine to negate the treatment or cause an overdose.

• If someone has anything less than 15 damage on one part just bandage, ointment, slap the ass. Don't waste any TRICORDAZINE on something minor. The only chemicals you shouldn't pass on using is DEXALINE and DYLOVENE, because you can't put a brute patch on toxin damage.

• Remember that pain's both a concept and a threat to the Marines. Always shove a pill of tramadol or two down a patient's throat after treating their injuries.

• Stay behind marines during combat. Your job is to heal people, not lead the breach into a nest. If someone receives any injury, no matter how small, treat it how you can! Even a tiny amount of burn damage can paincrit someone after awhile, and can lead to infections. It's best to check for scrapes when they arise and bandage them.

• Get ready to yell at marines and communicate with them. You'll chase down marines who insist "I'm fine" as their organs hang out of their chest. It's just a fact of life, but it gets easier when they pass out from the pain/blood loss/brain damage/decapitation from the ancient ravager they couldn't see because they were blind and running away from you. Don't tell people with fractures to get up and walk. Yell at them to Rest or lay down, then move them yourself. If wounds are bandaged you can't rip them by pulling, which is faster than grabbing. If some idiot won't stand still for treatment, use your voice and scream at his dumb ass to hold still and get fixed. Communicate frequently with the medical staff and let doctors know when the pod or shuttle is bringing up wounded.

• Be mindful of other medics. If it looks like they have a patient under control, don't barge in and try to handle it yourself. Only step in if the patient is in critical condition or if the other medic proves to be incompetent. You should assume they know what they're doing until they prove otherwise. Watching from a distance to make sure everything goes smoothly is fine. You can keep an eye on their health bar with your HUD. If you do need to assist another medic, try to work on damage that they aren't currently fixing. Assume that the first medic on the scene will follow the correct order for treatment (see above). Be EXTREMELY careful while giving pills to another medic's patient. It's usually best to avoid giving drugs in this situation as you may overdose the patient.

• Use stasis bags only when you have no other choice. They can help you drag a patient in critical condition away from combat if you need to move quickly (aka you just spotted a pack of ancient aliens ripping your squad to shreds) or if you can't prevent a patient from dying. Given enough time, stasis bags will eventually kill the occupant. At the very least, they can cause enough brain/genetic damage to incapacitate any marine that was in decent condition.

• Carry around a folded roller bed at all times, if possible. Roller beds save lives, the speed at which you can whisk the wounded out of bad situations is simply lifesaving. Whether it's beating out their terrible wounds from killing them, or dodging a Ravager that would have caught you both if you had to grab them and slowly carry them out - roller beds are not absolutely vital, but once you start making a habit of acquiring them, you'll love two. Click and drag it on yourself to fold it up and carry it. Double click it to unfold it. Drag a Marine to it to buckle them in. Click the roller bed to unbuckle them. You can grab one from medbay storage with little fuss at roundstart, and there are two more in the Medical Dome on the planet. If there are no roller beds, use the grab intent to drag patients with rib or skull fractures. Pulling them will cause organ damage.

• Consider OXYCODONE for you, the medic. An injector can be used for shooting yourself up if you're wounded in combat. Pain slows you down and that kills patients on the front line. Jab yourself with Oxy and you'll run at the usual speed, even if your right arm is hanging limply at your side, your ribs are broken, and Tramadol wouldn't help. With Oxycodone in your system, nothing short of death will stop you from saving your patients.

• Consistency is key. Everyone is going to talk about "The best medic loadout", or what you absolutely must carry in order to maximize your efficiency as a medic. Fuck that. Carry a loadout you as an individual can navigate efficiently, make sure you can stop bleeding (both internal and external), and treat toxins and burns. Other than that, carry what you can handle. Once you've decided what to carry, stick with it, learning the loadout so you can swiftly navigate it when the seconds count. Constantly changing your loadout breeds inefficiency.

Sources and Reading

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• Miserable Medic's Sharing Tips

• An actual guide to triage, trauma, and tricks in medicine

• Field Medic Loadout Guide

• Defibrillator Guide!

• Baystation Guide to Medicine