What level Physician skill should an MD have?

[acrosome]

Originally Posted by Mathulhu

Many skills can be augmented by Techniques, we see this predominantly with combat skills. There is no reason this cannot be extended to specific applications of non combat skills There are some Techniques that specifically reduce predictable penalties, are there any penalties that seem suitable for Medical Techniques?

Example
Chest Surgery, Surgery/A
Default Surgery -3, cannot exceed Surgery

Yes, buying off the -3 for chest or head surgery are obvious candidates, I'd say. Most of the rest of the penalties are for equipment or time spent or whatever.

One technique that I'd particularly like would be one that lets you buy off part of the default penalty when you default from Physician to Surgeon to stabilize a mortal wound. This would represent a non-surgeon having taken the Advanced Trauma Life Support (ATLS) course, and would obviate the ridiculousness of giving an ER doc or Special Forces medic full-on Surgery skill. (Which would give him far too decent odds to remove that gallbladder, as I have mentioned ad nauseum.)

Similarly, I'd like to see a technique to allow one to buy off at least part of the default penalties when one defaults from Physician to Surgeon to set a bone (as in Low-Tech). This is also to model those ER docs and the more highly-capable medics.

I'm sure that I could come up with others.