Star Trek:Keeler

[Bry_Sinclair]

Positions in such a series could be something like:
Commanding Officer
Executive / Search-and-Rescue* Officer
Chief Medical Officer
Chief Engineering Officer
Chief Communications Officer**
Chief Helm-Navigation Officer***
Chief of Security****

* Since the ship doesn't need a science officer, they would operate sensors and run analyses when not on missions
** A role that would be slightly more significant than just answering the spacephone
*** With a small operational crew (giving more emphasis to medical staff) this would be one way to save on key positions
**** A non-com

You could also include other medical staff, such as a trauma surgeon, biomedical researcher, chief nurse, or even a field medic, or maybe one of each.

 

[Nerys Myk]

Positions in such a series could be something like:
Commanding Officer
Executive / Search-and-Rescue* Officer
Chief Medical Officer
Chief Engineering Officer
Chief Communications Officer**
Chief Helm-Navigation Officer***
Chief of Security****

* Since the ship doesn't need a science officer, they would operate sensors and run analyses when not on missions
** A role that would be slightly more significant than just answering the spacephone
*** With a small operational crew (giving more emphasis to medical staff) this would be one way to save on key positions
**** A non-com

You could also include other medical staff, such as a trauma surgeon, biomedical researcher, chief nurse, or even a field medic, or maybe one of each.

Not sure how important the latter four would be on a show based in Sick bay rather than the bridge. Even the CO could be a secondary character unless he's an MD too. Doctors, nurses and medical techs should be at the forefront.

 

[BigJake]

If it had anything like the ratios of personnel on a contemporary hospital ship, and assuming a TOS-style setting and an upper ceiling of about 450 medical personnel, the ship would have a small (25 or thereabouts) ops crew and the rest of the crew should be doctors, nurses, search and rescue personnel, and a small on-board security detachment (probably around the same size as the ops crew).

I'd personally name it the Anastasis (comparably famous as a medical ship name to Enterprise as a warship name) and make it part of a class of hospital ships with only a small handful (maybe 3-4 others) of contemporaries.

The core crew would probably be, in ops (usually the B-story crew):

Captain (should be someone with a blend of mainstream Starfleet experience and medical competency, enough to work out the necessary priorities in either a medical or search-and-rescue emergency; I'd personally like the idea of making him a male Deltan, someone who could project a Yul Brynner kind of vibe)
Executive Officer (I like Bry Sinclair's idea of making them primarily responsible for coordinating search and rescue operations)
Chief Engineer (the person in charge of making everything run is an irresistible part of any starship crew, no matter its purpose, though they needn't be as prominent as Scotty was)
Chief of the Boat (responsible for on-board security and supervision of the enlisted crew)

And in the medical crew (usually the A-story crew):

Chief Medical Officer (the real core character of the show, a woman with strength, drive and force of personality able to shepherd and direct the variety of strong, intellectually independent and morally-certain personalities working under her)
Head of Xenomedicine (would probably be an eccentric used to studying and trying to think like alien species and to working out the causes of exotic medical phenomena, a bit more of a dreamer and an oddball but deeply dedicated nevertheless)
Head of ICU (would have to be someone of spectacular dedication and will, the sort of person who is inclined to work 72 hours straight in a crisis, who will be absolutely certain of their own judgement and who could occasionally butt heads with the CMO)
Quartermaster (responsible for securing necessary medical supplies, which might include all sorts of obscure and hard-to-acquire alien herbs and compounds, the kind of job which would be ideal for driving plots)

And you could cluster various roles around them using side-characters.