We all become attached to our dwarves ... and hate seeing someone die just because there weren't enough buckets in the fortress or someone forgort their First Aid task.
Maybe something like this could work?
New workshop/room: Medic's Workshop, or Hospital room
Required to build per patient bed: 1 each bed, table, sword, cabinet.
Required for each "heal dwarf" task: thread, cloth, 5x alcohol.
Operation procedure:
1. Player gets a dwarf badly injured. Player opens Medic's Workshop or Hospital, and assigns 'medic' task.
2. 'Medic' KOs the injured dwarf by forcing him to drink 5 alcohol, or by bashing him on the head with a hammer (the latter could be more fun due to head injuries). He drags the victim to the OP table.
3. Medic uses sword (scalpel), thread (stitching), Giant Cave Spider Silk (bandage), possibly lye (disinfectant)...
4. Target dwarf has a tiny chance of recovering on the spot ... a good chance to decrease the time needed for healing ... and a chance of dying during the operation, which apparently was the normal and expected result of mediaeval medicine.
4b. The operation may cause a liberal amount of blood spatters, or dwarf chunks.
5. Target dwarf rests in the hospital, with an improved chance of recovery.
6. "Give Water" and "Give Food" not needed while the patient is in the Medic's Workshop/Hospital... but e.g. only if the hospital room has a Well.
Cost of building and operating the Hospital
The ability to speed up healing is powerful and should therefore be expensive. This is why I added weapons to the process. I'd also suggest allowing only Giant Cave Spider Thread for stitching wounds, and only GCS Silk for bandaging.
Who works as the Medic?
Suggestion: Create a new Noble.
Using Medics would be mainly for experienced players. I guess adding a "Medic / Healer / Shaman / Witchdoctor" noble could work better than adding a levellable First Aid / Medic job.
Or how about simply using the Butcher skill? It's almost exactly the same job anyway (the only difference is that surgeons don't kill ALL of their patients :p )
Bloat idea: Medic could use plants or extracts as 'medicine' to improve healing. This could add real value to some of the currently less useful, but expensive items (Golden Salve?).