Re: Surgery - How does it work?
GURPS doesn't go into when a wound heals by second intention because it doesn't go into individual wounds. Whether you've lost 10 HP to one dolorous stroke or to 10 individual pokes, you've lost 10 HP. You don't have one big hole in your body and you don't have 10 small cuts and you don't have a hojillion scratches. You have 10 HP lost.
GURPS doesn't cover whether a Physician taking care of you to give you extra HP recovery rolls is binding your wounds to keep the edges pressed together to aid in healing, stitching them up, monitoring you for infection and draining the wound while applying topical or internal antibiotics, or monitoring your nutrition stress and activity levels and telling you to eat more protein or stop jogging.
GURPS also doesn't really cover how bandages heal 1 HP or a First Aid roll heals 1d6-odd HP. There's some hands waved around and some mumbling about treating shock, but if I've been axed in the torso for 6 HP (a Major Wound I might add), and someone uses First Aid to bandage or stitch me up and they roll 6 HP recovered, GURPS says I've got my HP back and I can go right out to a martial arts tournament as if nothing happened.
If I said "Great! I can just make it to my martial arts tournament in an hour if I run!" to my surgeon after he stitched that axe wound up, he'd probably fire me as a patient and make me sign out AMA to cover his ass for liability. (A vet would have me put in a small kennel cage to enforce rest, but same difference.)
An actual surgeon has Diagnosis, First Aid, Physician, and Surgeon and uses any or all four skills. He might be doing simple wound closure, or a D and C on a cyst, or extracting debris from a wound and that could involve First Aid, Physician, or Surgery, or all three. [1]
A vet has one skill (Veterinarian) which does the job all four ways, which muddles the issue.
[1] I know two people who wound closure of 5 or six stitches with enough First Aid knowledge to do basic sterile conditions and aftercare, but Sewing skill for the actual suturing. Which is basically TL 5 or TL 6 care for that injury but apparently that's good enough for some people.
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