Be a doctor for a day

The four things you protect as a Doctor

• ❤️
  Care

  If Care reaches zero, your day ends early with “A serious mistake”. Care slipped and the review board is on its way. It is a hard day to be a doctor.

  29% of the choices in this role lower it, and 58% raise it.

• 🤝
  Trust

  If Trust reaches zero, your day ends early with “Patients stopped coming”. Trust vanished and the waiting room emptied out. It is very quiet at St. Meridian.

  35% of the choices in this role lower it, and 52% raise it.

• ⚡
  Energy

  If Energy reaches zero, your day ends early with “You fell asleep standing up”. Exhaustion won. A kind nurse guided you to a bench and covered you with a coat.

  40% of the choices in this role lower it, and 17% raise it.

• 🏥
  Funds

  If Funds reaches zero, your day ends early with “The hospital ran out of money”. The funds are gone. Beds were closed and the lights dimmed by evening.

  15% of the choices in this role lower it, and 21% raise it.

Tips for a better day as a Doctor

1. Do not chase one number. In every role, a day with all four meters between 50 and 70 beats a day with one meter at 95 and another at 10. As a Doctor, the danger is rarely the big mistake. It is the quiet neglect of one meter.
2. Watch Energy most closely. In this role, 40% of choices lower it, which makes it the meter that slips away fastest. Funds is the most forgiving, with 15% of choices lowering it.
3. Read your advisors as opinions, not answers. Each one backs the option that helps the meters they care about, so when they disagree, ask which meter you can least afford to lose today.
4. Look for the choice that gives you something back. Many of the best options cost one meter a little and help two others. The tempting “easy” option often costs more than it seems.
5. Remember that choices can come back. A decision in the morning may return as a follow-up situation later in the day, so a quick fix early on can be expensive at six in the evening.

A sample day, step by step

Here is one example of how a careful player might get through a day as a Doctor. It uses six of the sixteen situations, picks the option with the best overall balance each time, and shows what each choice did. Your own day will be different, because situations are drawn at random and some choices bring follow-ups later.

1. 7:00 AM

   “Will it hurt?”

   A six-year-old asks if the injection will hurt. His mother is watching you closely.

   Chosen: “Tell a funny joke while you do it”. He laughs, the needle is done and the mother thanks you twice.

   ❤️ Care +5🤝 Trust +10

   The road not taken: “Say it will not hurt at all”. It does. He remembers.

   Standing after this call: ❤️ 55 · 🤝 60 · ⚡ 50 · 🏥 50

2. 9:30 AM

   Surgery nobody can pay for

   A patient needs urgent surgery but cannot afford the hospital fee. The manager is watching you from the corridor.

   Chosen: “Refer to a charity scheme”. It takes a day of paperwork, but the surgery goes ahead.

   ❤️ Care +5🤝 Trust +5⚡ Energy −5🏥 Funds −5

   The road not taken: “Send the patient home”. The accounts look tidy. The waiting room looks away.

   Standing after this call: ❤️ 60 · 🤝 65 · ⚡ 45 · 🏥 45

3. 12:00 PM

   The free trip

   A drug company representative offers you an all-expenses trip to a conference in return for “thinking of them” when you prescribe.

   Chosen: “Refuse”. You keep your independence. The trip goes to someone else.

   ❤️ Care +5🤝 Trust +10

   The road not taken: “Accept”. The hotel is lovely. The conscience is not.

   Standing after this call: ❤️ 65 · 🤝 75 · ⚡ 45 · 🏥 45

4. 3:00 PM

   An old friend, a new problem

   A close friend asks you to write a sick note for a few days. He is fine, but his boss is not.

   Chosen: “Decline kindly”. Honest, a little awkward.

   🤝 Trust +10

   The road not taken: “Write it”. It feels kind. It is not honest.

   Standing after this call: ❤️ 65 · 🤝 85 · ⚡ 45 · 🏥 45

5. 6:00 PM

   A very long night shift

   A colleague is sick and asks you to take his night shift. You have just finished yours.

   Chosen: “Say no politely”. Fair and a little lonely.

   🤝 Trust −5⚡ Energy +10

   The road not taken: “Take it”. Kind and exhausting.

   Standing after this call: ❤️ 65 · 🤝 80 · ⚡ 55 · 🏥 45

6. 9:00 PM

   A senior doctor’s error

   You notice that a senior colleague wrote a wrong dose in a chart. The patient has not had it yet.

   Chosen: “Report it openly”. Awkward, correct and likely to save someone.

   ❤️ Care +10🤝 Trust +5⚡ Energy −5

   The road not taken: “Ignore it”. You do not want trouble. The trouble may want you.

   Standing after this call: ❤️ 75 · 🤝 85 · ⚡ 50 · 🏥 45

Situations you may face

Every game uses six of these sixteen situations, so you will not meet them all in one day. There are also 4 follow-up situations that return after specific choices and 3 surprises that can appear without warning.

• A full emergency room. The emergency room is packed. Six ambulances arrived in ten minutes and the nurses have run out of chairs.
• The cold and the antibiotics. A patient with a common cold demands antibiotics. He says his last doctor “always gave them”.
• The free trip. A drug company representative offers you an all-expenses trip to a conference in return for “thinking of them” when you prescribe.
• Surgery nobody can pay for. A patient needs urgent surgery but cannot afford the hospital fee. The manager is watching you from the corridor.
• A senior doctor’s error. You notice that a senior colleague wrote a wrong dose in a chart. The patient has not had it yet.
• Twenty hours awake. You have been awake for twenty hours. The corridor tiles are starting to look like pillows.
• The family’s request. The family of an elderly patient asks you not to tell him his diagnosis, because they say “he’ll lose heart”.
• The turmeric forward. A viral message says a home remedy cures fevers and that hospital medicine is “not needed”. Patients are skipping treatment.
• Unneeded tests. The hospital manager suggests ordering extra tests for every patient, “to improve the numbers”.
• “Will it hurt?”. A six-year-old asks if the injection will hurt. His mother is watching you closely.
• A grandmother with a thermos. A very cheerful grandmother arrives with a thermos of tea. She says it fixed her cough and has brought some for you.
• Dengue season. Cases of a mosquito-borne fever are rising in the city. The ward is filling quickly.
• A very long night shift. A colleague is sick and asks you to take his night shift. You have just finished yours.
• An old friend, a new problem. A close friend asks you to write a sick note for a few days. He is fine, but his boss is not.
• A donated machine. A rich donor offers to buy a very expensive scanning machine, and wants a plaque with his name in the lobby.
• The night-time visitor. A very anxious young man arrives at 2 AM, certain he has a rare disease. He has read forty websites.

Every ending (spoilers)