What do you think of medical roleplay?

[orca112]

12 hours ago, Alyssa McCarthy said:

Medical RP should not be a copy/paste of the same overly detailed diagnosis and instead focused around creating engaging and interesting  RP with patients .

 

One thing that has been done "wrong" in a long time. With the ever running trend of striving for realism and more details, more in-depth things, more culture all the way to the extreme of "1 to 1" for some people, medical roleplay is no difference. You have people with real life experience jumping in, going in-depth on various topics, creating guides and explaining all the technical terms so your medical roleplay can look as advanced and professional - except that most people around you have no idea what you are trying to tell with transcutaneous pacing or endo-tidal capnography.

 

Roleplay that arguably relies the most on interactions between the patient (player A) and first responder (player B)  simply cannot work when one party has no idea what the other is talking about. What needs to change is moving away from the "hyper" realism and technical terms left and right to a more basic and understanding type of roleplay, breaking down things to the most simple way possible and looking for ways to actively engage and interact with the people rather than running down your script of checking pulse (what would your pulse be?), exposing wounds (what injuries could be seen?) and patching up wounds (slap on trauma pad, would the bleeding stop?) and advanced procedures.

[TheSenate]

2 hours ago, Koko said:

 

The problem comes if you simply don't want to RP within a particular faction (for whatever reason) and are left with no options but to conform to the formula on display if you want to partake in this RP at all, without the possibility of offering an alternative for those who want it. For example, I'm 100% sure that somewhere in the Venn Diagram of medical RP there's people who don't want to work at PHMC and people who don't want to go to PHMC, but want to mutually engage in medical RP of some kind. If those people find a common ground for mutual fun between individual players, then that's their prerogative.

 

I love Medical RP, and you and I have shared membership in a medical faction before, but for example I wouldn't return to FD as much as I'd love to RP a paramedic again, to name an example, because FD as a faction is not one I personally want to be a part of right now. So there's one less paramedic RPer in the server because I have one option I'm not interested in, and I know of other people in the same situation.

 

I don't disagree with this logic. The only issue is there needs to be high levels of communication and coordination, as well as oversight over these projects. At the moment, for example, PHMC and FD talk a little, PHMC and Hope don't talk at all. Granted PHMC and LSFD are working on building a little bit of a more mutually advantageous relationship, nonetheless, if we are to allow alternatives, there must be oversight and coordination.

 

The solution isn't a simple black or white, yes or no answer. Total centralization is bad for the reasons you've mentioned, we have competent medical RPers who are not participating because they don't feel like they fit in to the culture of the existing options, but total anarchy is also bad because then the system would be completely disorganized and chaotic. Leaving numerous people in small "factions" unsatisfied because none of them can get enough members to achieve their greater goals. 

Edited October 29, 2021 by TheSenate

[FatherHay]

Only reason I hate interacting with F.D., or the hospitals is - as the OP stated. I have no fucking idea what I'm being asked 90% of the time. And sometimes, people get pretty upset if you give them a weird / wrong answer. I'm not a fuckin' paramedic, I'm not a doctor - I've no idea what half the things I get asked in /do or /b are/mean. So I basically drive like an elderly person now, because I don't want to risk a chance-bump leading to a 3 hour session of Medical RP that I have no fucking idea what's going on in. I sit there AFK half the time, watching a show or whatever, and just pretend like I have any idea what they're talking about / doing. I could be shitting out of a bag IC by the end of it, and would have no idea. At least, that's been my experience thus far. I haven't had a huge amount of time in the hospital, but the 2-3 times I have been, or even just in accidents.. I've been sat wishing it was over.

 

Because like the OP says, it's all backwards. Why are the people who should know these things, asking us? Just ask the user something like, "How much time do you have?" Or, "Are you OK if this is a bit gruesome?" Or whatever it may be, and take it from there.. Don't ask me a half dozen questions, I don't know the answer to man.

[Coburn]

2 hours ago, Shaderz said:

we would have clinics on every street corner of the city.

That wouldn't happen and you know it.

 

MedRP is niche, at most we'd get 5-6 more clinics who all have people they know and can start off with.

[Shaderz]

11 minutes ago, Coburn said:

That wouldn't happen and you know it.

 

MedRP is niche, at most we'd get 5-6 more clinics who all have people they know and can start off with.

 

That was obviously a hyperbole, but the logic still stands.

 

5-6 clinics would be devastating. One private clinic can barely hold its own, imagine 6 of them. You need more than just people who can start them off. You need demand, and right now it doesn't exist for more than two hospital/clinic factions.

[Coburn]

3 minutes ago, Shaderz said:

 

That was obviously a hyperbole, but the logic still stands.

 

5-6 clinics would be devastating. One private clinic can barely hold its own, imagine 6 of them. You need more than just people who can start them off. You need demand, and right now it doesn't exist for more than two hospital/clinic factions.

Your argument doesn't make sense. 

 

There's no demand because majority of players only meet medicalRP if they crash a car or get shot, by introducing more clinics there is a chance they know one of the people running the clinic and get involved in medicalRP.

[TheSenate]

19 minutes ago, Coburn said:

Your argument doesn't make sense. 

 

There's no demand because majority of players only meet medicalRP if they crash a car or get shot, by introducing more clinics there is a chance they know one of the people running the clinic and get involved in medicalRP.

To be fair, this isn't how supply and demand works. People already have the opportunity to do casual medical roleplay with both PHMC and Hope, some do, many do not. Either way, most even semi-serious cases would have to get referred out to PHMC anyways since it is the only player-run hospital.

[Viscaria]

Okay so this is gonna be quite a lengthy post so bare with me here. I've been roleplaying in FD for around 1.5 years now with no resignation and my character (Jess Williams) is currently a battalion chief. I've spent a good while reading over everyone's replies in this thread and noted down some things I'd like to go over.

 

I'll start with one that got touched on a fair bit in the topic, and that's FD going into too much detail on scenes and confusing patients with not as much medical knowledge. It was mentioned that FD should "read the room" and go off of what knowledge the patient seems to have, all I can say here is that this is already a thing, we often tell our faction members that you should be roleplaying with your patient and not at them, we don't promote one-sided roleplay in the faction and always want members to be actively roleplaying with the patients. With that said, I'll be putting out an announcement on the Discord to remind players about this once I'm done with this post.

 

Next, since its a good transition, I'd like to remind people that we are also responsible for the well-being of our patients ICly, what I mean by that is individual EMS personnel are subject to get taken to court, if the court then finds evidence of malpractice or not applying something they should have, then they can not only be sued but also terminated from the department (character not player). What I tend to do quite often if I feel people have been on the scene for a long time, or simply don't seem that interested, is just do a couple of /me's to do what is needed, this happens quite often and can go into very little detail in order to get people moving on or going to bed.

 

I suppose I'll touch on people wanting to make private medical organizations now. Some points regarding it have been brought up already, one of the main ones I saw and agree with is that if you allow one you allow all essentially, while this would be ideal in an ideal world, the amount of people wanting to actively roleplay medical doesn't justify this, and again as mentioned already, we simply lack player amounts to do this, it would only lead to all medical factions having subpar members and not having enough players to roleplay with, which in turn would stop people wanting to roleplay medical on the server, and then the servers medical roleplay going even further down the drain. FD right now has around 90+ members or so and how many times do you see 0 FD on duty? having 5-10 people in private factions might help for a month or so, but when people start getting bored or burned out from GSW calls, it'll go down the drain.

 

I read something saying that we should have a medical script for things like vitals, this just isn't a good idea, people can and will start claiming things are unrealistic, which they likely would be. To make a medical script from scratch and make it viable would be substantial amount of work, research and high effort, not to mention people still wouldn't understand it, it would only confuse people more and no doubt clash with realism.

 

I'd like to briefly touch on something that was lightly discussed and that's the type of injuries people roleplay, it would be great if people can roleplay some variety in their injuries, I can't count the amount of times we've responded to MVA's and people hit their heads on the wheel, or have glass stuck in them. As someone mentioned, vehicles in this day and age are built for safety, just because your windows smash doesn't mean they fly at you at 50mph and attack you like a barrage of sharp spikes, its quite the opposite in fact, the windshield for example won't easily shatter, I'm sure you've seen someone break a windshield before, it "spiders" meaning it just cracks very heavily and when actually pushing it through the frame it appears more like plastic, side windows don't spider but they are designed to shatter into more safe, smaller chunks than they are sharp spikes. Injury variety can improve lots, and you don't need to be highly knowledgeable in medical to do this, and I invite anyone reading this to do so.

 

Finally, I'd like to remind everyone that people can always ask for help if they don't understand what's going on or need any help in general, imagine how hard it is from our perspective to read the room and roleplay accordingly if the patient just mostly stays silent and confused, reach out and talk with us, we'll help you all the way whether this comes to properly roleplaying your injuries or anything else.

[KaythPlus]

23 hours ago, KinnyWynny said:

 

One major criticism I have of the Fire Department is twofold, it isn't exactly authentic to a city Fire Department's motus apparatus, aka, they have an issue where they're caught between two worlds, the everyday world of players not giving two shits about medical roleplay, and people pushing for better roleplay, but thinking that more medical details is the answer. Any authentic EMS crew would never just transport a patient without getting details, call volume be damned, you're there to provide quality roleplay, not a taxi service. Take your time, do the details, be authentic to what EMS is, a mobile healthcare solution to everyday issues. And you'll find it to be far more rewarding than the current state of "Eh, who cares, toss them into the back and go." Use your partners, HAVE partners.

 

One of the biggest issues I have with EMT roleplayers on this server, is not there knowledge on specific medical details, it's how they act. I've seen Fire Department players come to the ER, state "I've just transported the patient, didn't treat them", didn't bring the crew who did treat them, and didn't ask the patient anything, not their name, age, what they do, what happened, vitals be damned, we can make those up, but details that are important and what EMS would definitely get is lost. And I feel like this creates the burnout FD players find themselves constantly in.

 

It isn't about the medical details, yes nurses and doctor roleplayers will ask about them, but that's not what we're looking for, we're looking for what happened to the patient and what you did. I encourage EMT roleplayers to focus less on treatments, you can just say you did something, yes get your IV's in so we can give drugs, yes give drugs too, because drugs can effect how a player roleplays if you explain to them what a certain drug does, but the patching/c-collaring can be handwaved in the end. It's about you and the patient, interact with them, get details, and talk with them. If you've ever seen a show based on real life EMT's, it's all about the questions they ask.

 

Now with that said, let's go to the patients. If you're uncomfortable with the questions EMS or Doctors/nurses are asking, ask them in PM's, "Hey, I have no idea what this means, can you just make up the vitals?" And from there, roleplay how you'd /want/ your character to roleplay. Having a heart attack? Look up the symptoms and do some spicy /me's, and have EMS/Hospital personnel make up the vitals, we have the resources to do so. It's a far smoother roleplay experience for everyone involved.

 

If you don't care, don't wanna roleplay it, you can refuse care. Sign a document, and go on your merry way, no one in the medical field likes people who go afk or straight up ignore us. That goes for cops, civilians, criminals and everyone in between. You all do this, you all can refuse care (unless you're a child or you're mentally insane) and so forth.

 

I apologize but some of your points feel genuinely unfounded in what the actual reality of the server is, because to claim any member of the Fire Department wants to simply shove patients into their ambulance and be used akin to a taxi is totally silly, it's infact the absolute polar opposite of what the majority if not absolute every Fire Department member in the server wants. A large majority of us build rapport on scene, build S.A.M.P.L.E which is all about those questions. Scenes are used as a device to build character, both for the patient themselves and all Factions involved, be this through the lighthearted conversation and questions that do happen on scenes, almost always — or the treatment itself.

 

You forget to mention that over half of our patients are typically unconscious, or a criminal suspect. So chit-chat isn't exactly their forte, they're usually untalkative and outright ignore attempts for details. And considering the Police typically do their questioning after the treatment, it's not as if the Faction can quarry them for details. We do, but usually get tid-bits if that. I think the thread and comments throughout rise some notable issues that the Fire Department could work on, but I unfortunately there are also a lot of vastly sweeping statements that don't actually rain true at least in my opinion and own experience.

 

Even when staffing alone, which does happen — hell I play typically post midnight so I'm frequently finding myself as the only one on duty so I'm forced to do exactly that. It's still insanely easy to weave questions in between your performances if treatment, the issue is never actually building that character and interacting with the patient itself, it's usually the circumstances regarding it such as, as mentioned; Patients whom are completely unconscious, unverbal or unwilling to talk.

 

Every Faction in the entire server has flaws, and burnout is also not anything that is unique to the Fire Department, or roleplay at all actually. It's something that naturally happens. I hope the Fire Department can improve in various ways, I have my own trifles with some small subsets of the roleplay as anyone would. I just think you'd do better, as would we all to actually look into how things actually are. What are EMT's trying to achieve and what are they failing at achieving? And if they are failing at achieving what they set out to do, then why? Is it policy? Is it server rules? Is it the risk of sueing or being taken to court?

 

To imply IV's should be set up but then the sheer basics like a Cervical Collar and Bandaging can be quickly glossed over is silly, as typically the Collar and Bandaging are far more friendly for those who aren't familiar with Medical roleplay.

Edited October 29, 2021 by KaythPlus

[CertifiedKiller]

I have deeply enjoyed my experience with medical role-players during my time on the server. The FD is a highly capable faction that demonstrates competent leadership and is a leading example of how a government faction should be run.