The future of medical roleplay

[Jedai]

We need paid healthcare and its various differences such as Medicaid for low income individuals, and then more premium  insurances just as a general money sink in the server. Medical billing irl takes ages though and medical providers do not interact with billing for the most part HOWEVER it does significantly affect patient care irl since some people will refuse to go to the hospital and take whatever basic treatment an ambulance crew will give you because it’s generally cheaper for them to do so. This is a factor FD/PHMC does not have to deal with because traumas from gunshot wounds/stabbings/beatings make up the majority of medical calls on the server and most of those people either let speed run accepting death or Rescue 99 shows up because there isn’t enough ambulances for the call volume. 
 

That being said, there needs to be a more interactive injury system to get people to be more invested in doing the medical roleplay and people have listed various ideas for that.

 

Private EMS won’t increase medical roleplay and it seems most people don’t realize that the way Private EMS makes money in the states is purely through people who are very sick/medicaid or getting a contract with a hospital which is something that PHMC has no reason to do since they run their own allied health program. We don’t roleplay hospital to hospital transfers, transfers to skilled nursing facilities, dialysis etc. In reality Private EMS has no place in the server. 
 

Personally I think PHMC should do EMT/Paramedic or even EMT/EMT buses as a gateway for people who may not want to do FD or don’t vibe with Fire Medic/Fire EMT culture.

 

 

[Fireworks]

1 hour ago, Kari said:

maybe having /stopbleeding on a 30 or 40 second timer

 

I'd even go as far to say that /stopbleeding using a bandage from a 24/7 shouldn't cease bleeding completely, it should slow the bleeding process up until proper medical action is taken.

[eTaylor]

6 minutes ago, Jedai said:

We need paid healthcare and its various differences such as Medicaid for low income individuals, and then more premium  insurances just as a general money sink in the server.

Because people make enough to justify the currently proposed healthcare system. It’s hardly a sink if the money is being pumped back to medical roleplayers who already make bank (someone posted $70k a week) while getting shot would cost more than your true monthly income. My character would literally become homeless, unemployed and financially unrecoverable in under a month and I’d rather get banned for avoiding the system all together than endure all that BS. 

[Twentybyte]

3 hours ago, colorlessrainbow said:

I wholeheartedly agree with Biscuit. I can only speak from my own example - I applied to be a lifeguard, I went through the already tedious recruitment process only to be told to attend an induction which turned out to be a 4 hours long session where the instruction word by word recited the BLS manual, which was already present and readily available on the forums. This, quite frankly, killed all of my motivation to do anything medical related. It wasn't only overly complicated, but also boring. It was a school-esque environment where you essentially had to sit and listen to a person type out a 10 pages long manual. Then again, this was in 2021 so I'd hope that had been modified and made less lengthy since then.

 

I'd love to have an FD character, it looks cool, I like the aesthetics - but I can't and won't bring myself to try and understand all the complicated procedures, treatments and whatever else. It's a tedious task for a regular person like me who doesn't have any medical knowledge, and I'm fairly sure that I'm not alone with this. If it was dumbed down, consolidated into a few pages of actual stuff that happens and EMTs/Firefighters deal with on a daily basis, I'm sure we'd see a spike in the number of applicants. 

 

Just my two cents from my very limited experience from 2021 - if it did change since then, I'll be happy to stand corrected. 

I think you stated this best, this was in 2021. That is officially three years ago and no way reflects the faction at all.

 

The way the faction use to teach people was god awful with complicated jargon that wasn’t even accurate. Bag valve masks use to be used on everybody, you had people stating the whole ass word orophalgyneal and people spent 45+ minutes on scenes that were a simple load and go.

 

@Biscuiti can also attest this is misinformation, our retention has massively improved from the beginning of the year with NEW standards. Our training isnt more complicated, its just more accurate and across the board? Extremely simplified from what it use to be. Which was 4 hours of information dumping hell. Now we have people who become just EMTs and actively want to be a Paramedic instead of staying as a basic. We also have AEMTs opened up for people who dont want to go through all Paramedic training.

 

Also our standards have changed completely. We’re focused on faster load n go transports for traumatic injuries, we dont ask vitals, we focus on interaction and making scenes funny or fun to be around. You have fire engines show up with rescues because we learned that the more people we have to a scene, the faster they go, and the scene just becomes more fun.

 

I’m not sure where the hell you got a Canadian Fire Department from us. But the departments changed, for the better. I went from having a hugely negative opinion of the LSFD before and presently think it has some of the best roleplayers on the server simply because its a lot more fun.

 

So it disappoints me to see members of LFM with outdated views push these misconceptions of where the faction actually is. Come try it and find out for yourself, shits a lot easier to do and teach than you think. I can make a good FF/EMT roleplayer faster than you can make a cop

[Biscuit]

4 minutes ago, Twentybyte said:

@Biscuiti can also attest this is misinformation, our retention has massively improved from the beginning of the year with NEW standards. Our training isnt more complicated, its just more accurate and across the board? Extremely simplified from what it use to be. Which was 4 hours of information dumping hell. Now we have people who become just EMTs and actively want to be a Paramedic instead of staying as a basic. We also have AEMTs opened up for people who dont want to go through all Paramedic training.

 

So it disappoints me to see members of LFM with outdated views push these misconceptions of where the faction actually is. Come try it and find out for yourself, shits a lot easier to do and teach than you think. I can make a good FF/EMT roleplayer faster than you can make a cop

 

I'm examining the statistics, I'll come back once I have an accurate count of stuff, it may shock you, it may shock me, I dunno how it'll do.

 

But I wish to say, that I did find out for myself, I did go through EMT training, the newly up-to-date one and I still think it's overcomplicated for the community my view won't change on that with the current procedures, to that, we'll agree to disagree and move on, if it's something EMS factions wish to take on as feedback, go right ahead, but I'm not gonna turn this topic into an argument about specifics, it's feedback as a community member.

[Kari]

41 minutes ago, Fireworks said:

 

I'd even go as far to say that /stopbleeding using a bandage from a 24/7 shouldn't cease bleeding completely, it should slow the bleeding process up until proper medical action is taken.

This'd be fancy too. Maybe illegal medical/drug suppliers could get access to small amounts of hospital-grade materials like hemeostatic gauze, and toniquets. Would make a new market.

[Twentybyte]

5 hours ago, Ascendency said:

I wasn't a member of LSFD, but here's my word: LSFD doesn't feel like a US fire department, and even a fire department. Although roleplay freedom is the key point, I believe LFM should do something to adjust LSFD to make it a modern fire department. Nowadays, LSFD rather looks like a Canadian fire department. That may refrain skilled roleplayers from LSFD. As it's mentioned before, I also think script-wise injuries are highly required.

Not sure how it acts like a Canadian Fire Departments, last I check Canadian Fire Departments are all non-transporting, most don't even certify their members as techs.

 

@Biscuit not sure what statistics you're using, but going from a retention rate of 0-1 per recruitment cycle, to 4-5 is pretty apt that it isn't that complicated compared to old training.

 

We don't teach EMTs about most of their drugs, legality in EMS, krebs cycle, any anatomy at all. We focus on the core competencies where needed. I can train a decent EMT in a couple of days. And I'm mostly teaching them the OOC points of being an EMT, not really the medicine at all. I just make sure they don't do stupid stuff like shoving a tube down a conscious guys throat as an EMR. If I remember you had some issues with the fact you were told you can't teach EMT-B's in the LSSD, which I apologize but that doesn't make our training complicated. We denied it because the old style of classroom sit-down where you use to spend 4 hours going over things like Pharyngeal poisoning and exposure to carbon monoxide wasn't really helping people respond to gunshot wounds and make them enjoyable and fun. It also meant that people too 0 information from their training. Also ESD uses us as their main training resource, and pretty much all those guys have had a great experience that a lot of them ended up joining us.

 

All our training is in the field, we put people on Rescues from the minute they're in the faction, where they watch, learn, and get taught on the job, per patient, by FTOs who've roleplayed it for awhile. Training isn't really our biggest concern, we spent months fixing that, and its at a fantastic point right now with a few hiccups.

 

Now on to the hospital. EMS roleplay without a well staffed ER isn't as fun. It's just rather anticlimatic to bring a patient to the ER, get their name, age and chat with them for a bit. Show up to the ER and have no one to talk to about what happened or roleplay with. Having a staffed ER is where medical roleplay needs to focus on. It acts a central roleplay hub, it allows EMS to hand patients off and it allows player to have a chaotic place to roleplay around. ERs irl are busy, chaotic, often occasionally violent, where crazy things are done everyday. And in GTAW that doesn't always end up being true.

 

@Nervous I saw that you wanted to make the hospital more of a roleplay hub. Thats where to start. One feature I'd love to have is to have an admission script. You bring a patient to the ER, you admit their name, age, and have them assigned to a bed in the ER or to the two "trauma rooms" for critical care. And if no PHMC are staffing the ER, they have the ability to get discharged as soon as they're admitted. If they're admitted, they have a patient medical record number and get the ability to be assigned to a floor on the hospital, or stay at the ER.

 

If they're on the floor, it should act like an apartment building, where you're given a room to rent for 1 buck or whatever PHMC wants to charge, that you can go in and out of. And actually gives people the ability to stay in hospital long term, and gives nurses wards to roleplay at that isn't the ER.

 

Beyond that for medical roleplay to really shine, we have a list of scripts in the LSFD that would make our lives so much easier. A lifepak script to manually assign vitals to patients such as heart-rate, blood pressure, oxygen level etc would be lovely. No one should ever be asked vitals unless they want to give them to EMS. Otherwise let us do all the work for them.

 

The injury script needs an overhaul, just have things like being shot in the leg inhibit movement, and for the love of god, don't freeze people when they're injured. Just have their movement greatly inhibited. If you're shot in the leg, you shouldn't be locked into an "Injured state". This only encourages people to go unconscious, go unresponsive, or being unresponsive. That hurts everyone involved and makes scenes unfun. If they're horribly injured, sure put them into a critical state where they're at risk of dying.

 

A script for people to overdose, something as simple as /overdose [drug] that allows them to have a status effect like "so and so has agonal breathing, pinpoint pupils and is struggling to stay awake as their breathing slows and eventually stops on its own" for opioid overdoses. Or for uppers like methaphetamine, give them a fun screen effect, a 'they're overheated, erratic' and give them a fun timer where if they're not hit with some sort of sedative, they can begin to lose health. Obviously people usually won't overdose their characters, but for people who want to roleplay overdosing, having an easy script that gives them accurate information helps a lot.

 

Having a medication injection script is  MUST. So many times I do /me injects fentanyl through their IV port, and the person just doesn't understand they're currently getting drugs. They'll miss it. Giving an injection via script with an effect on their character will make people realize "oh shit stuff is happening" a lot more than a PM from me.

 

Why in gods name has their not been a stretcher script. Please. Give me one. I'm so tired of having people follow me like a duck. Please. Let me put them on a stretcher, push it to the rescue, and load them in with a command.

 

A pharmacy business for people to buy prescription drugs prescribed by Doctors is really really needed. Shocked it hasn't been a thing yet.

 

Finally, just talk to us internally. We have a shit ton of ideas to make medical roleplay that much better, but for most of the LSFD and now PHMCs existence, we've been on the lowest priority for scripting and resources. A lot of suggestions here are... OK. But to me are just "I have never roleplayed in the medical part of gtaw, so I have no idea, heres something" and these ideas while nice, would not work practically. A illness script isn't happening, if it was, it'd be optional. I wouldn't mind it, but I'd rather people just look stuff up and roleplay it themselves. If you want a cold, just do /ame sneezes and call 911 at 2am.

 

Finally for the people here who've said they never get a rescue, or have been NPC'd when an ambulance was called. I really am sorry, but if you have ever looked at the statistics we get as the LSFD. Its a ridiculous amount of requests. LEOs call for ambulances and fire engines hundreds of times per day, just in January alone we had thousands of departments. And this is just from law enforcement factions.

 

We have hundreds of 911 calls a day, and usually we get 911 calls at the same time, so you have four separate incidents, two Rescue Ambulances, a Fire engine, and only so many people that we have to prioritize two calls out of four when they happen at the same time. This is also a huge issue when it comes to retention, we go from having no calls for hours to a mountain of calls at once. Never a steady trickle. So people who log on can get bored, log off, and then once they do I get 50 pending calls from various LEOs and 911s.

 

Another issue is that relations between factions are not that great. From experience some LEO factions treat us horribly, and I've had friends quit the LSFD after constant OOC abuse and yelling over IC departmental for ambulances we don't have. Its made most people in the LSFD get rather suspicious of being on LEO scenes and if anything happens, turn hostile. Unfortunately that just won't be fixed.

 

There's a lot of issues in the medical rp scene, but its changed a fuckton. And is so much better than before. If you've ever checked out threads by the LSFD, its a completely different faction from before. Trust me, it use to be downright horrible. So I get it. I would like the LSCoFD too, but that isn't happening yet.

 

@Jedai the LSFD has single-roles btw. You can just be an EMT without needing to be a firefighter. IMO being a firefighter is the only cool thing about the LAFD, but hey. Fuck realism tbh.

 

 

This is the last time I'm posting here so final point.

 

stop going unconscious please. its so rare, unless you're bleeding in the brain, please wake up.

Edited February 15 by Twentybyte

[NyxSky]

52 minutes ago, Biscuit said:

 

I'm examining the statistics, I'll come back once I have an accurate count of stuff, it may shock you, it may shock me, I dunno how it'll do.

 

But I wish to say, that I did find out for myself, I did go through EMT training, the newly up-to-date one and I still think it's overcomplicated for the community my view won't change on that with the current procedures, to that, we'll agree to disagree and move on, if it's something EMS factions wish to take on as feedback, go right ahead, but I'm not gonna turn this topic into an argument about specifics, it's feedback as a community member.

 

I think I can confidentially say that the training program we have now is far easier than we had way back when I first joined the faction. I am not an irl medic. I'm not an irl firefighter. I have no experience in the field whatsoever. Everything I've learned, I learned from the people gracious enough to teach me. I am that single person who was retained from that 2023 cycle mentioned a couple times in previous posts ( Sage Fowler ).

 

My first EMT training before even getting on the field was long, boring, and I was simply sitting in a classroom. I didn't learn much and I was thrown onto the field feeling a bit lost because quite frankly, I think everyone else was feeling lost too.

 

Speed forward to when we finally began adapting better practices medically. More accurate. I won't lie! I too was overwhelmed with the plethora of new information thrown at me. I didn't know any of it and I had been in the department for almost 6 months at this time.

 

However, the people who worked tirelessly to overhaul the system had been and still are around giving many opportunities to learn with visuals too! They have never and will never expect to to become an irl emt/paramedic (though learning with them has made me consider the career path every now and then. They are our heroes and learning from them I've learned even more that they deserve our upmost respect and love!!! Go give them a cookie). Our standards aren't as bad as a lot of these posts are making it out to be! If you can stabilize someone enough and get them to a hospital bare minimum? Congratulations you can be an EMT!

 

It's been over a year now since I've been here. I've personally received feedback from newer members of the department and even returning members that our new system is far better. It's interactive, you get hands on experience while learning instead of sitting stuck in a classroom all the time for 4 hours straight. From my observation the people who struggle are the people who aren't around in the first place or they don't actually ask for help or ask questions. There is always someone around, even ooc, willing to explain a topic to you. No one is actually expecting you to know the Latin. For some of us learning the bigger terms is kinda fun even if we aren't irl medics. I think we should be allowed to Nerd out on these things just like cops can Nerd out on their things, I see no difference.

 

At the end of the day, 2024 LSFD training procedures not only for medics but also for our fire crew is more streamlined. (Shout out to Dr. Miller) We have flowcharts that are easy to read and quite frankly are fail proof. You can't really go wrong. I always have my protocols nearby if I am assisting with medical calls. Hell. I may get a little lost too, but there is always like I said, someone to help if I need it. We've retained quite a few of our newest applicants perhaps we could get input from them on the newest guidelines!

 

 

[eTaylor]

39 minutes ago, Twentybyte said:

stop going unconscious please. its so rare, unless you're bleeding in the brain, please wake up.

 

Kinda hard to do when the script literally forces you to KO. 

[Jorgensen]

1 minute ago, eTaylor said:

 

Kinda hard to do when the script literally forces you to KO. 

 

In the injured state, you can still speak. You can only not speak when you're script dead.