Medical Preparations

Posted on Fri Dec 11th, 2015 @ 1:34am by Lieutenant JG Ricki St. Louis & Lieutenant Commander David Deschanel M.D. & Commander Anna Komack
Edited on on Fri Dec 11th, 2015 @ 1:34am

Mission: By Dawn's Early Light

[ON]

As was her habit, Dr. St. Louis stood acenter one of the medical facilities with her eyes closed. There were plenty of marine, civilian, and starbase disaster protocols, but they didn't seem to harmonize. Each jealously commanded its own elements. She whispered to herself, "That's the problem with doing thing by the manual. The manual all too often gets in its own way... and mine." Independent resources had their advantages, but so did harmonious integration. At least she could do something with fleet resources, and possibly civilian as well, ~Computer, who would be the best one to approach about adapting disaster resources?~

A list of names scrolled on a screen.

"Hmm. Steiner... that name keeps popping up."

It had been some time since Commander Komack had been directly involved in any medical procedures, and since moving into the administrative division of Starfleet Medical as she got closer towards her retirement (how early dependant upon how soon she got fed up of dealing with the minutia of the role), she often felt envy for those doctors who still got their hands dirty with actual medicine. Even being called Doctor was a nice thing for her; nowadays she was more often called by her rank than her former job title. Today was not one of those days of envy however; she didn't envy any of those who would be more involved than her in the triage and treatment of the patients the upcoming battle was likely to create. She would still help where she could, but her skills had been allowed to atrophy through dis-use for too long to be much more use than an orderly to fetch equipment asked for by the real doctors; the real work she would be leaving to the station's newest head physician; a man who had just arrived that day by the name of Deschanel.

David had gotten stuck in as soon as he had arrived on the station. He'd received a briefing by subspace on his trip informing him of the basics of the situation - he guessed that more details even if known wouldn't have been transmitted over subspace, and even if they had, they weren't details he particularly needed to know. All he knew was that the station was almost certainly going to be generating a lot of patients in a short amount of time, and soon. With that in mind, he had skipped the usual formal reporting in process, and had gotten down to the main sickbay to get to work. Commanders Komack and Gunning were the only superiors he had actually met so far, and Gunning had come to him rather than the other way around.

"Doctor," Komack said, catching the new arrival just as he was making his way into the surgery suite in his ongoing familiarisation of the facilities and getting the medical staff prepared for what was to come.

"Commander," David answered, pausing with one foot in the surgical suite and one out as the older woman approached.

"I have the information you asked for about the other hospital facilities on the station." She handed over the padd she had been carrying. "We have the auxiliary sickbay as the direct second to this one. Similar facilities and staff numbers. There are a further 10 smaller sickbays on decks 125, 200, and 2061, as well as the civilian hospital on the promenade. I've already instructed them to prepare for the upcoming battle as per our protocols, but I'll defer to your experience if you have any suggestions."

David took the padd and skimmed through it, absorbing as much information as he could. "I think that the emergency receiving areas here and in the auxiliary sickbay should be the primary destinations for new patients not already near one of the other facilities," he said. "The more critical ones should come here, considering this is where our more senior doctors are. We should also assign at least one doctor to each of the main areas of the station likely to see activity - the ops centre, fighter bays, and places like that. They should be instructed to triage, stabilise where they can, and beam any casualties directly to one of these two centres."

"Agreed," Komack said, nodding. "I'll issue the orders." As the hospital administrator walked away, David turned and continued his way into the surgical suite.

"Doctor St. Louis?" he asked, looking around. He had memorised as many names of the top doctors in each section as he could, but there were so many of them he didn't have time to try and memorise faces.

Dr. Deschanel was answered by a disembodied voice focused at him from the intercom, "Yes, Doctor Deschanel?"

One of the nurses closed her eyes and explained, "She... does this a lot. She lives in cyberspace."

David paused for a moment, lost at how to respond to that, but decided that today he didn't have time to tackle that particular quirk head-on. Instead he decided to just go with the flow. "How are our preparations going in the surgical suites?"

Ricki listed for him, "All starbase occupant physiology types have been identified. First aid and surgical packs have been accordingly prepared for distribution. Cryo and metabolic stasis drugs have been prepared against the advent of prolonged life support failure. Security has registered primary lockdown zones to help us plan personnel distribution."

[OFF]

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Cmdr. Anna Komack
Lt. Cmdr. David Deschanel
Lt. Jg. Ricki St. Louis

Starbase 332
Pegasus Fleet