What level Physician skill should an MD have?

[malloyd]

Originally Posted by cosmicfish

I think that today, in the US, you might be able to get a medical license with 12's in the major medical skills. Might. I think board-certification will be tougher, and almost all MD's in the US are certified: Family-practice MD's will have 14's in Diagnosis and Physician, ER docs will have 16's in Diagnosis and First Aid, internists might need 16+ in Diagnosis and Physician, and Surgeons will likely need 16+ in Surgery.

I don't think I'd insist on that high a skill for Surgery, it takes a lot more equipment bonuses than other medical skills, so you don't need to be as good to get plausible success levels.

GURPS skill requirements for earning a living skills can be thought of as being set by usually be rolling against a 16 (i.e. you don't fail any more often than the 17 or 18 everybody always does). For jobs with no adventuring level stresses or critical time pressures, 12 is fine, most tasks will be done at +4 or so for being routine and/or allowing extra time.
For jobs that usually are done under adventuring level stress and time pressures - and emergency room or battlefield First Aid/Physician certainly is, 16 is required to get those consistently up to professional standards results, though you can probably let your Diagnosis skill go a little lower.

Honestly, the small town family doc probably can get by with Diagnosis 12. And if he's got a nursing staff may not even make a Physician roll in a typical week. He needed some to get through med school, but it needn't have been kept up. Yeah somebody with Diagnosis-12 and Physician/Last TL-10 isn't a very *good* doctor, but he's marginally competent, and assuming he has that nurse with Physician 12 or 13 to draw the blood samples and stitch the cuts and sends the tough cases to the big city hospital, he's not going to be killing enough patients for the licensing board to be investigating him.