Am I supposed to handle the patients manually in this game?

[FL]

I am a bit confused about how the game wants us to enjoy the game. Are we supposed to build everything and just let the doctors do their own things or should we handle the patients manually?

Since the default setting is the doctor treating the patient automatically but sometime they just make the wrong diagnosis. And if we treat the patients manually, it then seems too easy because you just need to click every treatment options highlighted.


And few question below.

1. Sometime the doctor can't find all the symptoms. Is it because the doctor's level isn't high enough?

2. The default setting is the doctors treating all patients automatically. Can we change the default to manual for all the patients? Is this recommended?

3. Is doctor mode recommended if we want the best "Doctor Sim" experience and have the challenge of treating the patients correctly?

[Kuattro]

Obviously, at the end of the day it's a matter of taste, but in my opinion the medical side of the game is what sets it apart from other manager games.

If you do not enjoy manually controlling patients, then you will be missing on a sizable part of the game.

And believe me, when you advance enough through the game, some cases can be quite difficult. If you get a patient that presents with chest pain, only one additional hidden symptom, and a pulsing symptom at that (pulsing symptoms can cause a patient to collapse), you need to start culling those 12 or 20 pages of possible diagnosis quite fast, or risk your patient going into cardiac arrest while you make sure they don't have asbestosis.

As for your questions:

1. It can be that the doctor is not qualified yes (some tests like ear examinations require some experience), or it can be that the necessary equipment is not present, like if they need to do an ECG but there's no cardiology room available in the department nor in radiology. Look for greyed out tests, and if you hover over them it will tell you why they can't be performed.

2. You can take control of every patient that comes to a department by pressing the fourth button from the left in the "management mode" screen for the department. You can do it for any departmant, and don't forget doing it every time you open a new department (like I always do). You can also take care only of patients delivered by ambulance or helicopter in the ambulance screen (third button from the right on the lower left).

The second option is, in my opinion, heavily recommended, because amongst those patients you will get the most critical cases, and those require your immediate attention, and are better not left to the AI.

As for the first one, I normally take care of all patients, at least at the beginning. But at some point, when you are gettin 130 or so patients per day, you may start to feel like automating some departments. Just remember, your manual control is always more efficient that the automated system, so plan accordingly, and if you are going to let the AI control some departments, they probably will need extra staff to compensate for it.

3. The difficulty options can enhance your experience of course, but personally, I only use them once I feel comfortable enough with my staff automatically handling most cases, and me only taking care of a selected few. If I had to scroll through pages and pages of possible symptoms, tests and diagnosis for 100+ patients each day, without the game recommending me the tests and telling me when there's a collapse about to happen, I would go mad. Once I'm only dealing with a handful of cases per day, is when I increase the difficulty.

[FL]

Thanks for the detailed answer! I very much like the medical part of this game but I just want to know how in-depth of the design so i won't have the false hope in the early game so thanks for clearing it.

Originally posted by Kuattro:

you need to start culling those 12 or 20 pages of possible diagnosis quite fast

Is there a treatment manual in this game?

[Kuattro]

Originally posted by FL:

Is there a treatment manual in this game?

In the patient card, in the diagnosis section (the upper one), you will see a small magnifying glass on the right side. If you press it, a window will open with every possible diagnosis for the currently known symptoms with their treatment, and next to every diagnosis, a list of all possible symptoms for each one. If you hover the mouse over any symptom, it will tell you what examination can discover it and what hazard they are.

[FL]

Originally posted by Kuattro:

Originally posted by FL:

Is there a treatment manual in this game?

In the patient card, in the diagnosis section (the upper one), you will see a small magnifying glass on the right side. If you press it, a window will open with every possible diagnosis for the currently known symptoms with their treatment, and next to every diagnosis, a list of all possible symptoms for each one. If you hover the mouse over any symptom, it will tell you what examination can discover it and what hazard they are.

ahh i am still doing the tutorial and it kinda just give me the answer right after i performed the examination. I guess i need to keep advancing the game in order to feel what the difficulty really is later on.