v0.31 Talk:Health care

Bugs fixed in the current version

Just because it was true a version ago doesn't mean it's true now. Here are some bygone issues of Dwarven Healthcare:

• People have reported mixed results with bandaging wounds. Fix listed: ^{v0.31.04 Bug:474}.
• Surgery will never complete if the Surgeon cannot lift his patient. Fix listed: ^{v0.31.07 Bug:318}.
• Patients requiring traction benches will never use them. Fix listed: ^{v0.31.07 Bug:1244}.
• Some wounds may heal before treatment, preventing the surgery job from completing, making your dwarf invalid forever. Fix listed: ^{v0.31.04 Bug:168}.
• Traction bench is broken. Fix listed: ^{v0.31.08 Bug:1244}
• Bone setting is broken. Fix listed: ^{v0.31.08 Bug:1244}
• Wounded dwarves in hospital but not in beds die of thirst Fix listed: ^{v0.31.08 Bug:1035}

Rest to death

Be aware that once you have a hospital zone defined - all your injured dwarves will immediately run there at top speed and start to "Rest" there. "Rest" job can not be interrupted by any other job because a resting dwarf gains "unconscious" state. If you have no uninjured dwarves to bring food and water all patients will eventually get thirsty and dehydratate to death. Insanity breaks the "rest" job and the mad dwarf will wake up and wander around but it isn't helping.

If all your dwarves are injured to some extent - don't designate hospital zones.

Starving to death in the hospital?

I had a few injured dwarves; they ended up starving to death in the hospital while a surgeon tried to perform surgery. Do I need to put food stockpiles in the hospital? Does it need a well? --Bombcar 16:46, 3 April 2010 (UTC)

Were all your other dwarves busy? As "bring food/water to injured" is like a well job and will only occur when no other order is deemed more important.Kenji 03 11:24, 5 April 2010 (UTC)

There was a bug. See "Wounded dwarves in hospital but not in beds die of thirst" at Template:Bug:1035. The dwarves were dying because without a "Bed" they were not hitting the "Rest" state and the dwarves were never brought food.--Falldog 01:42, 8 July 2010 (UTC)

Nearby pond/pool of water

I think it's very important to make note that a pond or pool be located inside or at least in a room adjacent to the hospital. See my user page if you want details, but the basics is that doctors (and possibly other dwarves) will run to the nearest water source to clean an injured/resting dwarf if they're dirty/muddy/bloody/whatever. The problem is both sieges and distance. During a siege, your doctor's going to get killed, plain and simple. Yeah, other dwarves will get killed bringing water to dwarves, too, so it's important anyway. Another thing is distance. Say you have a bloody dwarf with a badly dented chest, and another dwarf with a mangled, broken head gushing blood. For whatever reason, your doctor decides to diagnose Urist McDentedChest first. The next course of action is cleaning. Your doctor then grabs the nearest bucket from your hospital coffers, runs up the stairs to the nearest murky pool, brook, or river and halfway back to the fortress gate, UristMcGushingBloodOutHisHeadHemmorage bleeds to death.

On another note, dwarves do seem to clot very well now compared to old 40d. UristMcGushingHead in my fort has stopped bleeding, and even gone from extreme pain to faint to pale, and now he's back to only fainting, but if you go into battle with multiple wounded dwarves, you're going to have your doctors making multiple runs outside. Inside water needs to be made an important point. With the irrigation technique required at the moment, it shouldn't be too hard to explain since a similar technique is used. --Ryun 21:51, 3 April 2010 (UTC)

        Would a well suffice?

It should, but I have not yet gotten to the point of making a well so I can't say I've tested it. With the abundance of underground pools, it shouldn't be difficult to make. I had suggested a pool initially because they would be easy to set up (except a little difficult to get full) for a new fort. I assume they should, anyhow. Once I bend my head around the technique of getting down to those pools multiple z-levels below, I'll test it.

After several stupid mining errors ("Let's use the channel ramps to mine instead of digging out the topmost staircase and get stuck forever!") it appears that wells do indeed work for supplying dwarves water. However, I would like a recommendation that the hospital is put on the z-level as closest as possible to an underground pool if that is the water source. Dwarves take a fairly long time to get water when the distance the bucket must travel exceeds greater than 3 z-levels. Prep with multiple wells as well, of course, especially if you must place the well a long distance from the water source.--Ryun 22:03, 13 April 2010 (UTC)

I chose to run stream water down to my hospital. I channeled out a cistern one level deeper than the hospital level, connected diagonally to a shaft that ran to the stream. The diagonal connection kills the water pressure. I crossed my fingers, channeled out the last tile connecting the shaft to the stream, and it worked perfectly, so I permitted use of the door to the cistern. (I've not flooded a fort since the Second Magma Incident of 2007.)
—0x517A5D 06:11, 18 April 2010 (UTC)

A well works fine. Sadly my dwarves don't use my bewdiful balineae right across from the hospital to fill buckets. Maybe because of all the soap in the water. (Okay, I'll be honest, never seen a dwarf with soap there, but they do get nice thougts from 'having a bath') --Old Ancient 20:27, 18 April 2010 (UTC)

Traction bench bug?

My medical dwarves seem unable to move patients onto the traction bench. I've seen mine spend most of a year on "Place In Traction", standing over the victim, not accomplishing anything. --DarthCloakedDwarf 05:09, 18 April 2010 (UTC)

I cannot confirm, for I have not even seen any of my hospital workers (with surgery enabled) use the things, and all the wounded recover just fine, regardless. --Bronzebeard 00:11, 1 May 2010 (UTC)

i had the same "place on traction bench" problem; my doctor was stood over the patient for what seemed like an eternity with that job description, but nothing was happening. as he started to starve himself, i removed the traction bench and he went to get some grub. i then tried the bench in a different position (away from any walls), but that didnt work either; had the same job, both in the same positions, but nothing was happening... i've ended up just scrapping the traction bench altogether, and have had no problems since :]--DJ Devil 02:20, 1 June 2010 (UTC)

If playing on a Save made prior to .08 remove every traction bench and every table, everywhere on the map. This will remove the medical dwarves from the stalled loop that happens when they are unable to lift a patient and carry him to surgery. As of .08, the surgeons will be able to carry new patients if they are not already stuck in the loop. --Falldog 04:28, 21 June 2010 (UTC)

* Dwarves without a depot will steal hospital items and store them once a trade caravan arrives.

what does this mean?

I guess it refers to the more general bug of dwarves not respecting property of caravans in some situations; supposedly they will steal food and booze if thers none in the fortress piles and they r hungry. So in this case they try to fulfill the thread, cloth and so on requests, ordered in the hospital H menu. Haven't encountered this myself though. --92.202.18.240 20:33, 27 April 2010 (UTC)

Surgery bugged?

It worked fine for me: it took a heckuva long time because my surgeon was incompetent; several surgery jobs and some ancillary damage later, rediagnosis - no more surgery required! So it looks like a bad surgeon will take lots of attempts to get there but will eventually succeed. soundandfury 22:55, 5 May 2010 (UTC)

Hospital beds

I had a soldier who required suturing and since suturing is bugged, he never healed. Despite doing his duty and fighting, he kept returning to the hospital, showing rest instead of sleep, racking up bad thoughts from not being in his room and bed and possibly didn't even eat or drink, only getting what others brought him. So I thought, meh, remove the beds. this made him sleep on the floor in the hospital. So eventually I removed the hospital and in no time he is back to ecstatic, sleeping in his room, eating in the hall, making new friends, taking a bath. His wound and the suture and dressing requests are still there and are performed (to no avail) in his room.

My recommendation for now (31.04 should fix some hospital bugs): Don't have a hospital and first check if doctors work fine without it. --92.202.10.116

'Clean Patient'

what labour relates to this? ..awh, he just died of infection.. but for future use, does anyone know? is it an automatic part of the diagnosis progress, done by the diagnostician? is it done by anyone with a healthcare skill? and can we have the answer on the page, please?--DJ Devil 19:40, 26 May 2010 (UTC)

It makes sense that wound dressing wound be part of this, but you'd have to check, it might just be cleaning skill. Ya need soap btw. 71.134.230.146 04:55, 31 May 2010 (UTC)

'need' is such a false word. it's not 'need'-ed. it just helps fight infection, so i'm told. i still havent made any, though :p nor plan on it. ^-^ and i think it's part of the diagnosis progress, but i've not had much injury of late, and i only have one specialised doctor with all the relative labours enabled, so my guess is as good as anyone's ^-^ i shall change some labours during the next megabeast attack and try to pin it to one of them (or all of them?)--DJ Devil 02:27, 1 June 2010 (UTC)

Two dwarves in one bed?

I was trying to ignore all the injured dwarves in my fortress for awhile, but it wasnt doing to well for me, so i opened a hospital. then 2 dwarves immediatly went (as patients)and started resting in the same bed. what the deuce? – unsigned comment by Dudemcman

At a loose guess, they both detected the same bed at the same time, and didn't detect each other heading for it. --DeMatt 19:11, 3 June 2010 (UTC)

Bug: overlapping office with hospital zone prevents bag/chest filling

I had a hospital zone with 10 chests, and my dwarves would not put anything in them- cloth, thread, splints, etc. This was because my Chief Medical Dwarf's office overlapped the hospital. Once I deconstructed his office chair, dwarves came to fill the hospital chests with supplies.--208.81.12.34 14:03, 3 June 2010 (UTC)

Single hospital versus multiple hospitals

So... after I've gotten the hang of actually building a hospital, I've been wondering. Can multiple dwarves work in the same hospital simultaneously, so you can store all the supplies in one central location? Or is it better for efficiency to have several small but fully-equipped hospitals, so that each hospital can have a doctor working in it? --DeMatt 19:14, 3 June 2010 (UTC)

Well, after watching two dwarves get simultaneously patched up in the same mini-hospital (ignoring the others), I'm fairly sure that multiple hospitals offer no benefit over singletons. Besides being able to locate them in different spots, that is. --DeMatt 23:46, 6 June 2010 (UTC)

Which medical skills affect outcome?

Do we know whether skill levels at wound dressing, suturing, surgery, etc. affect the chance of a successful outcome? The articles on these skills didn't mention. I think I remember Toady's devlog talking about dabbling surgeons being bad at surgery? -- Creidieki 15:59, 16 June 2010 (UTC)