You'd think on a ship that size that they'd have a small hospital, plus staff.
Why was the Ent-D sickbay so small? And why only one doctor?
- Thread starter The Rock
- Start date
It doesn't look like it. In the episode "Waking Moments", The Doctor complains about how his repeated requests for a larger Sickbay fall on deaf ears.
Even on a ship with 150 people aboard... one doctor and a nurse don't seem to be enough.
We've seen that in some extreme situations, sickbay was overcome with wounded... but most of the time that isn't the case.
I still think the ship should have had at least some backups for extreme emergencies... say like a team of holo-nurses and EMH's which could materialize at any deck to provide aid if such a situation arose... otherwise, leave one doc and nurse to man sickbay on a regular basis and switch them out with holo's occasionally.
It seems to me that ideally the minimum number of doctors on a ship would be two, so that if the main doctor is sick there's someone available to treat them. It also means they can have shifts, and days off.
The fact that the EMH became a series regular shows that Voyager's medical staff definitely wasn't enough, but I like the EMH so it all worked out.
The fact that the EMH became a series regular shows that Voyager's medical staff definitely wasn't enough, but I like the EMH so it all worked out.
To be fair, do we know how big the medical staff was before they lost people when they were zapped to the delta quadrant?
Kim says that they lost their doctor, Paris says they lost their nurse too. They're new to the ship though so they might just be counting bodies on the floor.
In the RW, a 150-crew "cruiser" wouldn't have any graduate level medical professionals at all, but would have make do with an enlisted corpsman (typically a first class to senior chief) who would cross train non-rates and deck crew as secondary responders. However, science officers are fairly rate IRL compared to Starfleet, so something like the situation on NX-01 where a Life Sciences Officer (exobiologist? xenobiologist? What's the diff?) doubles as the medical officer would make sense. In the case of Voyager, this would have probably been Exobiology Officer Samantha Wildman, who was considerably more qualified to act as assistant medical officer than Paris.
Who says that was the only sickbay?
An aircraft carrier is never alone, and it's rarely out of range of land. They can get one or two resupply flights every day, with people coming and going for all sorts of reasons. The medical facilities are just for emergencies, if anyone needs long-term care before they can make a full recovery, they'll be flown back to a base after they've been stabilized.
Sorry, maybe my post looked like it was following from the aircraft carrier tangent.
I was referring to the Enterprise-D from the TV Show, Star Trek TNG.
That's interesting - onscreen evidence that there is more than one identically designed sickbay. Maybe Crusher visits them on her rounds of the ship.
The season one sickbay is presumably still on the ship somewhere too, didn't that look very different?
It wouldn't surprise me, as others have hinted, if Crusher and her main sickbay was primarily at the disposal of officers and diplomats. And its resources and Crusher's expertise were used for other patients only when medical emergencies called for additional support.
Other Doctors are always referenced, just not seen at the same time.
My wife was a Yeoman in the US Navy / Navy Reserves. From what I've seen, most Chief Corpsmen could walk into any small town hospital and run the ER department.
I drafted deck plans and a crew roster for a small 100-man Patrol Cutter (actually, the Fed POL from SFB). The medical staff typically consists of one Doctor, one RN nurse or PA physician's assistant (either is "almost" a doctor in their own right), two enlisted corpsmen / combat medics, and one or two med-lab technicians, plus anyone who has Basic Emergency First Aid training. It's not uncommon to have a second Nurse or an Intern (doctor-in-training) assigned.
Below is the sickbay, both the original design I came up with, oh, 15+ years ago and the revised version I created two or three years ago. Yes, for a ship with only a 100-man crew, there are a lot of beds. But remember, this ship is a First Responder and thus needs the capacity to aid other ships or settlements in distress. (It also has Brig space for 20 detainees.)
I changed the layout because I felt the first version was inefficient. The new version is "better" but still not truly what I wanted. Sadly, because the sickbay was one of the last tings I drafted in the deck plans, it was hemmed in and restricted to be this size and shape. To change that and make it any larger (or to move Sickbay to another deck) would mean ripping half the ship apart to make everything else fit back in.
In all honesty, there are many aspects of your Original design that I prefer over your Revised design.My wife was a Yeoman in the US Navy / Navy Reserves. From what I've seen, most Chief Corpsmen could walk into any small town hospital and run the ER department.
I drafted deck plans and a crew roster for a small 100-man Patrol Cutter (actually, the Fed POL from SFB). The medical staff typically consists of one Doctor, one RN nurse or PA physician's assistant (either is "almost" a doctor in their own right), two enlisted corpsmen / combat medics, and one or two med-lab technicians, plus anyone who has Basic Emergency First Aid training. It's not uncommon to have a second Nurse or an Intern (doctor-in-training) assigned.
Below is the sickbay, both the original design I came up with, oh, 15+ years ago and the revised version I created two or three years ago. Yes, for a ship with only a 100-man crew, there are a lot of beds. But remember, this ship is a First Responder and thus needs the capacity to aid other ships or settlements in distress. (It also has Brig space for 20 detainees.)
I changed the layout because I felt the first version was inefficient. The new version is "better" but still not truly what I wanted. Sadly, because the sickbay was one of the last tings I drafted in the deck plans, it was hemmed in and restricted to be this size and shape. To change that and make it any larger (or to move Sickbay to another deck) would mean ripping half the ship apart to make everything else fit back in.
Some of your Revised designs are good like independent surgery rooms.
If you were allowed more floor space, you could make a more efficient Med Bay room design.
Last edited:
Single Pharmacy Room makes more logical sense than Dual seperated Pharmacy Rooms.
Individualized & Seperate Surgery Rooms makes more sense to me.
