Isn't it dumb to only have 1 Doctor on Voyager and NX-01 Enterprise?

[thewanderingjack]

Voyager had at least 4 (Bride of Chaotica).

Mmm just to be difficult I call semantics, what exactly did Neelix mean by "lavatory"?

But yeah, nice catch . They never showed one though right? I liked this pic https://vignette3.wikia.nocookie.ne...ision/latest?cb=20070614183253&path-prefix=en is that the top of it close to the camera?) and he's implying a lot more (how many toilets do 150 people need?).

 

[thewanderingjack]

Were Remans native to Remus?


I'm sure I watched an early episode of TNG where an extra was in the toilet and walked out onto the bridge.

Tell me if you can remember which. How could you tell?

 

[Timo]

There's no episode where the door label would be in focus, but the door opposite to the one at the starboard aft corner (that is, opposite the starboard entrance to the Observation Lounge) is supposedly labeled as a Head. This door sees use in many episodes starting with "Emergence". Since both male and female crew uses it, there's either a unisex head there, or then a foyer that further leads into gender-segregated toilets.

(Supernerd mode on: Since the door was formerly also labeled Observation Lounge, the foyer might in fact lead to the same corridor as the starboard aft one, only making this detour to the lavatories... After all, the Lounge does get accessed from a corridor of some sort, not directly from the Bridge. And Lounge people would wish to access the toilets, too.)

Were Remans native to Remus?

Is this one of 'em "Does the Pope Fall in the Forest" type of questions?

Curiously, we don't know. For all the mystery surrounding Vulcan's history, we could say that those Nosferatu creatures from ST:NEM were the original Vulcans, and the Romulans were the result of them crossbreeding with some of the human-lookalikes so common in the galaxy, after which Vulcans were transplanted from lush Romulus by Sargon's people to their desert world as a cruel joke...

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Prax]

Voyager had at least 4 (Bride of Chaotica).

That's awesome! I always thought the only reference to a bathroom was when Jake Sisko talks about it on his Daddy's special sailing ship.

I figure a 24th century starship has "some kind of" micro transporter waste remover.

Supernerd mode on:

As if it wasn't on before

 

[JRTStarlight]

Voyager had at least 4 (Bride of Chaotica).

I couldn't recall, so I checked the transcript.
NEELIX: Replicators aren't the only systems of convenience offline. We've only got four functioning lavatories for a ship of a hundred and fifty people.

So they apparently have more than 4 when everything is working. I couldn't find hard data on how many heads are in a submarine, but a guess of 1 head for 20 people seems a good estimate. So maybe the Voyager had double that (8) when everything was working. But it's just a guess.

 

[Unionized Elf]

I couldn't find hard data on how many heads are in a submarine,

Four toilets plus three urinals.

 

[JRTStarlight]

And the crew compliment for that submarine? If it's around 150 or less, I was close.

 

[q264]

I got to admit I never understood this logic? The NX-01 didn't even have a nurse or EMH for the doctor to work with. I would say the crews were big enough that you would at least want a small staff to help take care of medical needs. Wouldn't need to be as big as you would see on the other shows but 1 is a comically unrealistic number.

I think that is a good question in general for any series. I mean why is Ogawa just a nurse? Shouldn't every person on the Enterprise medical staff be a fully trained doctor? Sure there's a need for a nurse's role, but I'm guessing other doctors would be able to do the job just fine while also being able to act as the person holding the scalpel (or 24th century equivalent).

 

[Mark_Nguyen]

I've only just found this thread, so I'll contribute this:

https://forums.studentdoctor.net/threads/capabilities-of-aircraft-carrier-hospitals.694626/

According to it, a Nimitz-class aircraft carrier will have around fifty medical staff, comprising ten or so doctors, fifteen nurses, and a couple dozen technicians - for a crew plus air wing of 5500. This is likely just for routine medical stuff like sicknesses, minor surgeries, and lots of dental cleaning - when I toured the USS Midway they told us that the ship's dentist was pretty much booked solid from the beginning of the tour to the end, just pulling teeth!

Given how much unknown stuff Starfleet runs into, having at least one doctor on every starship on exploratory missions would be a bare minimum - since they always seem to double up as scientists with their own science interests to worry about too, at least those people are being as much explorers as the resident sawbones. Larger ships deployed within known space would have the same, but smaller ones could probably get away with a medic, corpsman or EMH/LMH if and when the technology became available.

But we know of at least some installations didn't have a full medical complement that could handle everything... We know the crew of that subspace relay station ("Aquiel") had no medical personnel, but they weren't really that far out. Extending to the JJ-verse, they saw fit to leave two people alone on an ice planet with no one to help with the sniffles. And yet, even the mighty Enterprise-D had to retreat to a starbase when they ran into stuff they couldn't handle ("Brothers").

Mark

 

[johnar]

I got to admit I never understood this logic? The NX-01 didn't even have a nurse or EMH for the doctor to work with. I would say the crews were big enough that you would at least want a small staff to help take care of medical needs. Wouldn't need to be as big as you would see on the other shows but 1 is a comically unrealistic number.

Jason

Show dynamics comes to mind first. They were there, but how many engineers do you recall in any of the versions of trek (save Barclay in TNG)? Too many roles / parts taxes an audience. When the audience sees episodes numerous times it can better cope with multiple characters. Remember, TV was still getting used to the syndication effect on audiences. This is how the same actors are spotted playing various roles in reruns (for example). In Tos Trelane and the Trouble with Tribbles Klingon Captain. Same guy.

A cover story (like the re-graphic of warp drive speeds and factors of warp) is an extra-canonical attempt to cover "oochies" like this. One cover might go, in ENT the crew was small and man-against-the-elements type thing. Roughing it with one Doctor and one helmsman (Mayweather that we know of), etc. The whole crew I think was all of 80.

 

[Takeru]

I think that is a good question in general for any series. I mean why is Ogawa just a nurse? Shouldn't every person on the Enterprise medical staff be a fully trained doctor? Sure there's a need for a nurse's role, but I'm guessing other doctors would be able to do the job just fine while also being able to act as the person holding the scalpel (or 24th century equivalent).

As a nurse I'm offended reading that! Nursing is a profession and no, a doctor wouldn't do just fine doing a nurse's job, this is a ridiculous statement.

Of course tv is largely to blame for that because it often portrays nurses as doctor's assistants who hand them stuff and not much else, it annoys me to no end.
For a real life perspective, if a doctor (outside of an emergency) tells me to get him x and stretches out his hand I roll my eyes, tell them no and do my own work, if they need something they can move their butt and get it themselves. Luckily this is rare except on tv where this is shown to be nursing.

 

[JJohnson]

I got to admit I never understood this logic? The NX-01 didn't even have a nurse or EMH for the doctor to work with. I would say the crews were big enough that you would at least want a small staff to help take care of medical needs. Wouldn't need to be as big as you would see on the other shows but 1 is a comically unrealistic number.

Jason

You would think they'd have a CMO, and Assistant CMO, plus at least 2-5 nurses to assist in surgeries and with minor issues not requiring the CMO's presense. My wife's a nurse and while Trek is much more advanced, she has in her surgery room a doctor, one or two nurses, anesthesia, and a rep from the equipment company there during surgery.

 

[q264]

As a nurse I'm offended reading that! Nursing is a profession and no, a doctor wouldn't do just fine doing a nurse's job, this is a ridiculous statement.

Of course tv is largely to blame for that because it often portrays nurses as doctor's assistants who hand them stuff and not much else, it annoys me to no end.
For a real life perspective, if a doctor (outside of an emergency) tells me to get him x and stretches out his hand I roll my eyes, tell them no and do my own work, if they need something they can move their butt and get it themselves. Luckily this is rare except on tv where this is shown to be nursing.

Oh no I didn't mean to offend or denigrate nurses! My Mom was a nurse for forty years! It truly is a noble profession, and a hospital would not run at all if it weren't for nurses. I know first-hand they are the ones who make a hospital tick. I still think a doctor would be able to fill a nurse's role quite well after some training, especially since both are medical-oriented professions and both have a vested interest in patient care. I'm just saying that every member of the Enterprise staff should be a fully trained doctor because it would be helpful for diagnoses and crisis situations. I can imagine in real life some doctors have a big ego and act as if nurses are subordinate to them outside of emergencies like you describe, but I would assume such petty workplace dynamics have been mostly smoothed over by the 24th century. It seems like a time where you can be what you want to be, and I can respect that some people want to be nurses and not doctors. That said, I would think that the skills for both positions are so closely related that it would be more helpful if all the medical staff could perform both roles interchangeably depending on the situation. Maybe Ogawa already is trained to perform surgery in a crisis situation?

 

[Prax]

My summary

Voyager has an excuse. Their CMO and one or two nurses were killed in the first episode. Plus they had Paris and Kes, and the "Medic team" for emergencies seen once in a blue moon(Like in "Ashes to Ashes")

...And the EMH never sleeps.

And Enterprise had one doctor who also never sleeps. He also had an assistant.

Voyager had a crew of around 150, and Enterprise around 80.

In TNG, they had over 1000 personnel and passengers; so it makes sense that there were a few doctors on board as well a larger medical team. They also stopped at Starbases frequently, and could adjust their compliment as needs were anticipated.

That leaves us with DS9. Bashir had a medical staff, but was he the only doctor? There was a counselor on board who left(and was never replaced) sometime between season 4 and season 7. DS9 had anywhere from 1000-8000 people on board. We certainly get the impression that there's just the one infirmary.

I Vote for a title change and transfer to a different forum.

"Isn't it dumb to have only one doctor on Deep Space Nine?"

 

[Shamrock Holmes]

I think that is a good question in general for any series. I mean why is Ogawa just a nurse? Shouldn't every person on the Enterprise medical staff be a fully trained doctor? Sure there's a need for a nurse's role, but I'm guessing other doctors would be able to do the job just fine while also being able to act as the person holding the scalpel (or 24th century equivalent).

I can understand what you're trying to say there, but I'd actually suggest that you've mostly got that the wrong way around.

Let's look at the four known medical staff on NCC-1701:

Leonard H. McCoy - described as Ship's Surgeon at least as often as he's described Chief Medical Officer. Likely therefore primarily responsible for "invasive" medical procedures, also leads in diagnostics and research.
M'Benga - expert in xeno-medicine, specifically Vulcans and a capable general practioner.
Sanchez - pathologist, likely also assistant surgeon.
Christine Chapel - assigned as a nurse, also a trained medical researcher (by implication specifically in medical archeology (palaeontology?), some knowledge of pharmacology) and a capable surgical assistant, educator, paediatric care specialist/child psychologist.

IMO, it's reasonably likely that all four of the above have doctorates and as far as 'general practice' (treatment of known illnesses and injuries with established cures, promotion of general health and wellbeing) I would bet that Chapel is at least as capable of carrying out treatment as any of the others, and probably more than Dr Sanchez if he (?) is specifically a pathologist.

Where IMO the role of the medical doctor ("physician" or "surgeon") comes in is dealing with the unknown and coming up with new treatments (not that nurses aren't part of this process, they are, but the MDs are leaders in this).

 

[Prax]

Chapel was a doctor in TMP, which I've heard takes place just a few years later. So she went to medical school at some point, and she was called nurse, so she must have gone to nursing school first. Perhaps her assignment on Enterprise included medical school.

 

[q264]

IMO, it's reasonably likely that all four of the above have doctorates and as far as 'general practice' (treatment of known illnesses and injuries with established cures, promotion of general health and wellbeing) I would bet that Chapel is at least as capable of carrying out treatment as any of the others, and probably more than Dr Sanchez if he (?) is specifically a pathologist.

Where IMO the role of the medical doctor ("physician" or "surgeon") comes in is dealing with the unknown and coming up with new treatments (not that nurses aren't part of this process, they are, but the MDs are leaders in this).

That's a good point. I imagine the Enterprise-D as being a ship staffed with specialists, so it could be that Ogawa also has her doctorate, but in nursing. I'm still sort of left wondering what she can do that Beverley Crusher can't (besides being able to do everything at once, which is a reasonable argument). I think a CMO or any M.D. needs a good nurse to be most effective, and that's who Ogawa is to Beverley. She's her "Number One".

The original question relates back to Voyager and why they didn't have anybody to immediately replace the first doctor. If all the medical staff were trained to be Medical Doctors then they wouldn't have to rely on an EMH in the Delta Quadrant. But that wouldn't be very fun now would it?

 

[WARLOCK1965]

I got to admit I never understood this logic? The NX-01 didn't even have a nurse or EMH for the doctor to work with. I would say the crews were big enough that you would at least want a small staff to help take care of medical needs. Wouldn't need to be as big as you would see on the other shows but 1 is a comically unrealistic number.

Jason

In Enterprise series Captain Archer was picking crewmembers at the time of the Klingon arrival so the first few shows it makes sense plus other ships were get their medical staff ; now for Voyager they medical staff and other crewmembers were killed by the time Voyager got to the Delta area of space.

 

[Voth commando1]

Yeah remember in Caretaker Voyager's chief medical officer was killed along with just about all the staff.

 

[Jason X-Mas]

Yeah remember in Caretaker Voyager's chief medical officer was killed along with just about all the staff.

The staff though seemed to consist of a single Vulcan Nurse. Granted you got the EMH as a backup and while nobody could predict being transported across the galaxy you still had a 2 week mission and a mission that might lead to some kind of fight. Toss in the fact that Starfleet ships I think are trained to expect the unexpected the medical stuff seems small IMO.

Granted I do kind of like the idea that other doctors might have been elsewere when the Caretaker got hold of the ship, but like I mentioned above you would almost have to think they would have all been in the same spot when they died. KIind of like those pilots in season 1 "Battlestar Galatica" when a missile accidently goes off and kills many of the ships pilots and Starbuck has to train some nuggets.

Jason