Can no Medical Training be Better than First Aid?

[Alden Loveshade]

By GURPS Basic Set, Fourth Edition, p. 213, Physician defaults are IQ-7, First Aid-11, or Veterinary-5.

Unless someone spends 16 points or more on First Aid, when trying to act as a Physician, the First Aid skill is useless. That to me doesn't seem realistic.

Imagine two characters, both IQ 12. Neither has a medical skill other than First Aid. One has spent 12 points on First Aid; the other has spent no points on a medical skill whatsoever. But their abilities as a Physician are equal.

Am I missing something?

[Varyon]

First Aid is an extremely limited skill, and considering it defaults to Physician +0, any dedicated healer is going to have Physician, not First Aid. I wouldn't expect anyone to really have First Aid over IQ+2, and even that's higher than I would expect - First Aid is typically something you put [1] or [2] in case the party healer (with Physician - or magical healing that renders such skills largely moot) isn't available.

Of course, there's no case where having no medical training would be better than having some training in First Aid, at least from a skill perspective, because you always use the best default available. If IQ -7 is better than First Aid -11, you use the IQ -7 default. So it's really just "First Aid doesn't contribute to medical situations other than basic first response until you've made a substantial investment in it," which isn't outlandish.

In TL's where Physician doesn't exist, you'll need to replace it with Esoteric Medicine; how effective this is relative to Physician is ultimately up to the GM... but you'll generally be better off investing in that than First Aid if you want to do more than patch up injuries and the like.

[Donny Brook]

Originally Posted by Alden Loveshade

By GURPS Basic Set, Fourth Edition, p. 213, Physician defaults are IQ-7, First Aid-11, or Veterinary-5.

Unless someone spends 16 points or more on First Aid, when trying to act as a Physician, the First Aid skill is useless. That to me doesn't seem realistic.

Imagine two characters, both IQ 12. Neither has a medical skill other than First Aid. One has spent 12 points on First Aid; the other has spent no points on a medical skill whatsoever. But their abilities as a Physician are equal.

Am I missing something?

Basically, -11 default is ridiculous. The -5 for Veterinary is also ridiculous. They should be -6 and -4 respectively.

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by Alden Loveshade

Imagine two characters, both IQ 12. Neither has a medical skill other than First Aid. One has spent 12 points on First Aid; the other has spent no points on a medical skill whatsoever. But their abilities as a Physician are equal.

Am I missing something?

Perhaps it's that their Defaults are Physican-5 ? That's pretty much the definition of a not useful Default. It shows that First Aid has very very little to do with Physician. So don't buy up your first Aid in hopes of finding a cheap path to Physician.

I can see reasons for buying up First Aid. In a game with no magic orUT healing an adventuring group is going to be very dpendant on that intila D-whatever whiel any situation where they're going to be resting to recove rHP will probably have an npc Phyusician available. Though if they all have HT11+ and Rapid Healing they probably don't care about that.

[pawsplay]

Using First Aid as Physician is not synergistic. It's just for really, really skilled First Aiders to be able to do some physician things, in a pinch, if there's no physician handy.

[Kromm]

It's definitely important to recognize "best default" and "What does this actually cover?" Imagine this putative IQ 12 person:

0 points: First Aid @ IQ-4 = 8, Physician @ IQ-7 = 5; can do first response at 8 and complex medical procedures at 5.

1 point: First Aid @ IQ = 12, Physician @ Max{IQ-7, FA-11} = Max{5, 1} = 5; can do first response at 12 and complex medical procedures at 5.

2 points: First Aid @ 13, Physician @ 5; can do first response at 13 and complex medical procedures at 5.

4 points: First Aid @ 14, Physician @ 5; can do first response at 14 and complex medical procedures at 5.

8 points: First Aid @ 15, Physician @ 5; can do first response at 15 and complex medical procedures at 5.

12 points: First Aid @ 16, Physician @ 5; can do first response at 16 and complex medical procedures at 5.

16 points: First Aid @ 17, Physician @ 6; can do first response at 17 and complex medical procedures at 6.

It's a statement that first response skyrockets but doesn't really teach you how to do rounds in a hospital, create a regimen for a diabetic, treat cancer, prescribe scary drugs, deal with radiation poisoning, etc. At best, at some insane level of ability, you can fake these things marginally better than an equally smart person who knows nothing about bandages and treating shock.

And yeah, it makes little sense to invest that many points in First Aid, due to the fact that First Aid defaults to Physician at no penalty:

0 points: Physician @ IQ-7 = 5, First Aid @ IQ-4 = 8; can do first response at 8 and complex medical procedures at 5.

1 point: Physician @ IQ-2 = 10, First Aid @ Max{IQ-4, Physician} = Max{8, 10} = 10; can do everything at 10.

2 points: Physician @ 11, First Aid @ 11; can do everything at 11.

4 points: Physician @ 12, First Aid @ 12; can do everything at 12.

8 points: Physician @ 13, First Aid @ 13; can do everything at 13.

12 points: Physician @ 14, First Aid @ 14; can do everything at 14.

16 points: Physician @ 15, First Aid @ 15; can do everything at 15.

Unless you're obsessed with first response and need an expert skill level at just that, you'll want Physician once you're investing more than 4 points.

Still, I suppose I'd allow First Aid to replace Physician for the sole purpose of hastening natural HP recovery if the HP were lost to something First Aid could treat in the first place (typically meaning gross and visible injury) rather than to, say, poison, radiation, flesh-eating bacteria, diabetic shock, or whatnot.

[Alden Loveshade]

Please forgive me if I didn't make my point clear.

Perhaps these examples will help:

Example 1) This person's been an Emergency responder for years. They're the most skilled in First Aid on their entire team. They've now reached a victim who, without treatment, will be dead before a Physician arrives.

Does it make sense that their best chance of saving the patient's life is ignoring everything they ever learned studying/doing First Aid?

Example 2) Imagine you or someone you know needed medical help. Would you rather receive treatment from someone who both watches medical shows and is an expert in First Aid (First Aid skill), or from someone who only watches medical shows (Physician default)?

[johndallman]

First Aid is an Easy skill: it's really easy to learn some basics to help injured people. Physician covers a huge field.

I've seen characters who were learning Physician as part of a full-scale course be allowed to recycle previous points in First Aid into Physician. This is rare, because few characters can be part of a campaign while taking medical or nursing training, but it has come up. Human learning is more complicated than GURPS skills reflect.

[Rupert]

It seems to me that the game is saying "If someone is really good at First Aid they've probably picked up enough general medicine to be better at Physician than their base IQ would indicate", but also that really very little in First Aid has anything to do with Physician as a whole.

I'm not sure that characters won't take high levels in First Aid - it's a +2 vs Physician for emergency care, and if that's all you want, but you need to be reliable, it's fine. Games with the harsher bleeding rules from Martial Arts and high levels of violence might see such characters, for example.

[Alden Loveshade]

I posted the above before I saw Kromm's response. I do understand that, if you're serious about doing medicine, it's better to spend points on Physician than First Aid. I agree--that's probably the reason this First Aid/Physician thing never occurred to me before.

And I'll add a note that I was certified in CPR/First Aid (although my certification needs to be renewed). And I worked as a journalist who checked the daily logs for several years. I knew every reported traffic collision, assault/battery, fall, fire, etc., in the local area. So I knew every single injury that was reported to a police/sheriff/fire department in about a 400 square mile area.

If I needed medical care and my only choices were someone who was great in First Aid or someone who had no medical training whatsoever? I'd go with First Aid.