10-24-2014, 07:51 PM
Good tips Variable, I didn't know half of that so thanks for this.
There's a couple of things I'd question though. Firstly, not needing to check if the patient is ready to be healed. I wasn't aware of the issue that alias mentions but my concern with just healing someone without asking, whilst they're engaged or not fully in cover is that doing so might make them vulnerable and unable to move out of the way of incoming fire or effectively return fire. If I heal someone whilst they're lying down, can they continue to aim and fire normally and get up and move out of danger if necessary?
The other thing is the suggestion that the medic should be constantly checking everyone. This seems a rather inefficient use of him, as he could be checking five perfectly healthy people before getting to the one person that actually needs patching up. So it seems to make more sense for him to stay alert to reports of people being hit and attend to them (if it's safe to do so of course) and when appropriate, if he thinks there might have been injuries that haven't been reported or he might have missed them, ask over the radio if anyone thinks they need checking. Certainly though, once the fighting has finished and there's a bit of time, then it would make sense to check everybody before moving on to ensure that nobody slows down the group due to injury that they might not be aware of.
There's also situations where there are people down and it's unsafe for the medic to get to them but there's a risk of losing them and being unable to complete the mission, where it would be appropriate to ask the team leader whether he wants the medic to go and try and save them, or if he wants to send someone else in first, either to provide covering fire or try and drag the bodies back to a safer spot. If I was team leader in such a situation and the medic just decided that it was his job to heal everyone and ran in and got himself killed trying, leaving us with no way to get people up and complete the mission, I'd be a bit annoyed that he hadn't asked me for orders first, as I might be assessing the situation and trying to think of ways to salvage the situation that didn't put him in danger.
So to sum up, my advice would be medics should try and keep themselves safe (and everyone else should try and protect him if they're suddenly ambushed and there's nowhere safe for him to hide, as they're probably going to need him soon) and whilst they can use their own initiative to do their job when it's safe, in a dangerous situation they should ask their team leader for orders before putting themselves at risk.
There's a couple of things I'd question though. Firstly, not needing to check if the patient is ready to be healed. I wasn't aware of the issue that alias mentions but my concern with just healing someone without asking, whilst they're engaged or not fully in cover is that doing so might make them vulnerable and unable to move out of the way of incoming fire or effectively return fire. If I heal someone whilst they're lying down, can they continue to aim and fire normally and get up and move out of danger if necessary?
The other thing is the suggestion that the medic should be constantly checking everyone. This seems a rather inefficient use of him, as he could be checking five perfectly healthy people before getting to the one person that actually needs patching up. So it seems to make more sense for him to stay alert to reports of people being hit and attend to them (if it's safe to do so of course) and when appropriate, if he thinks there might have been injuries that haven't been reported or he might have missed them, ask over the radio if anyone thinks they need checking. Certainly though, once the fighting has finished and there's a bit of time, then it would make sense to check everybody before moving on to ensure that nobody slows down the group due to injury that they might not be aware of.
There's also situations where there are people down and it's unsafe for the medic to get to them but there's a risk of losing them and being unable to complete the mission, where it would be appropriate to ask the team leader whether he wants the medic to go and try and save them, or if he wants to send someone else in first, either to provide covering fire or try and drag the bodies back to a safer spot. If I was team leader in such a situation and the medic just decided that it was his job to heal everyone and ran in and got himself killed trying, leaving us with no way to get people up and complete the mission, I'd be a bit annoyed that he hadn't asked me for orders first, as I might be assessing the situation and trying to think of ways to salvage the situation that didn't put him in danger.
So to sum up, my advice would be medics should try and keep themselves safe (and everyone else should try and protect him if they're suddenly ambushed and there's nowhere safe for him to hide, as they're probably going to need him soon) and whilst they can use their own initiative to do their job when it's safe, in a dangerous situation they should ask their team leader for orders before putting themselves at risk.