Medical Lab, Part One

The next department I’m going to talk about is the Medical/Dental Department, specifically the medical side for now.
The first thing you need o know is the purpose of your ship. As we already discussed that much earlier, you should know if your ship is expected to be away from a spaceport for long periods of time or if it merely goes between ports and is rarely without medical aid for a week or more. Another thing to think about is whether there is better medical aid nearby, such as if your ship is part of a caravan that travels together or if your species has an ambulance that can zip in, pick up and injured, and zip them to a hospital ship or nearby station. I won’t be talking much on a hospital ship as that would need to combine an entire hospital with a movable space ship. Although there are such ships in modern navies, I am not knowledgeable enough on medicine to explain all the rooms a hospital ship would need besides the basic stuff I’ve covered already. That said I would like you to remember that most hospitals, at least most of the ones without the city in their name, are specialized in at least one area. Some focus on brain surgery, some focus on hearts or aging research while others focus on children or studying diseases. If you have a hospital ship, it’s likely that there will be some areas that have larger rooms and more staff than other areas while some areas may be practically ignored.
Now that you have figured out how much off ship medical support your ship will have you can decide how much your ship needs in medical space. Your crew will need to do basic first aid such as fixing cuts and probably fixing or putting casts on broken bones. They’ll need to be able to clean any wound to prevent infection and give pain medication until the injured can be treated. If your ship will never be far from medical aid, especially near stations that are always well stocked, that is all you really need for medical facilities. However, if your ship will be travelling more than a day out of range of fast medical aid or is likely to be under attack and moving people between ships would be foolish, the ship will need more medical capabilities.