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[Urist McGyver]

Title says it all. I understand healthcare, but the actual process of healing eludes me. I had a dwarf fall the so-to-be Pit o'Doom and break both arms and a foot.

So I made 3 splints and a crutch. She doesn't use the crutch, but at least she stopped fainting from pain.

Anyway, now her body parts(all of them) are covered with water(so says the descript), and she is "wearing" the splints. So...what happens now? Is water the miracle liquid of healing?

By the way, I'm a dirty cheater. My doctor is Legendary in all doctorish skills and they don't decay

[Girlinhat]

Probably, the water is from the cleaning performed before any doctoring, and "wearing" the splints is what happens.  They also "wear" sutures, which are 'sewn into left hand' and bandages that are 'wrapped around upper right leg'.  Just give her time and she'll recover.  As long as there's no nerve damage (doesn't sound like there is) then let the splints work.

For an actual methodology on how healing works, check the raws for tissue types.  They have various healing rates, which work similar to speed and grazing - lower numbers means faster rate.  In general, it's either "severed" or "be patient" though.

[Urist McGyver]

I see. So if I change the tissue to, say, adamantine and increase the rate of healing of adamantine tissue to, say, instant, will I not only have nigh invincible dwarfs but also if they die from a fall their bodies can be melted?

[Girlinhat]

If you add the line for butcher returns.  Certain tissues return a different butcher product than what they are.  Use the BUTCHER_SPECIAL token to change this, see material_template_default raw for an example of this in fat.  You may have to make a special toy item named "adamantine bone" so that when it's butchered, you don't produce bones, but actually produce Dwarf Adamantine Bone the toy.  Then, melt that toy like any metal object.

If you were so inclined, you could make a golem type of creature made of iron, that you could butcher to produce "iron scraps" that were then melted into bars.  It would help a lot with resource scarcity, and facing an animal made out of pure iron isn't pretty either.

[ElthMysterius]

The process, as I understand it, goes like this

Dwarf gets injured, goes to the hospital and is designated for diagnosis.
The diagnoser looks at all the tissue layers on the dwarf and sees which ones are torn, broken and such, as well as any other general conditions (syndromes, infections etc)
Every injury needs cleaning. A single 'clean patient' job will take care of all wounds at once.
Torn 'soft' tissues generally need sutures and bandages. They won't affect a dwarf's work otherwise though, unless nerves or ligaments were severed.
Broken bones need to be set. Simple fractures only require a 'set bones' job, but shattered bones and compound fractures require some surgery and a traction bench. (Not entirely sure about that part. Correct me if I'm work)
Limbs with broken bones will require a splint or a cast if they want to remain functional while they heal. (This is the best part of the new health care IMO)
Necrosis (rotting tissue) is usually cured by surgery cutting away the affected tissue.
Severed limbs, strangely enough, don't seem to require ANY treatment, since the game doesn't 'see' an injury.

The one part I'm not sure about is damage to the central nervous system. I don't think I've ever seen a brain injury that wasn't fatal, but I'd imagine my dwarves aren't very good brain surgeons. I think I've seen them operate on the spine, but I don't think it helped much.

Syndromes and associated conditions currently don't have any treatment. So your dwarves are stuck being nauseous, feverish or in pain until they get over it.

Just now I kinda realized I went a bit off-topic from the OP's question. I know that in 40d, every season, the game did a check on every injured dwarf to determine if they healed up a step or not. In the new version, it works just as Girlinhat said. As I understand it, the number denotes the amount of time it takes to heal. I don't think anybody ever figured out what those numbers mean exactly, just that lower is faster.

[The13thClam]

Very poorly. Very, very poorly.

If a dwarf is injured any worse than a minor scrape, you might as well assign them a tomb and wait for the inevitable. Or it could be I just don't really care about healing my worthless peasant conscripts fully understand the healthcare system.

[Girlinhat]

Quite the contrary, I have dwarves undergo rather serious injury, get patched up, and walk back onto the field.  If you have a stocked hospital, then infection and foot nerve damage are the only things you really have to worry about.  One of my worst injured dwarves in a past fort barely survived about a 13-15 level fall when the floor he was on suddenly caved in.  He crawled to the hospital, shattered everywhere and bleeding everything, and next year he was back working on the same cursed ground.

[JmzLost]

Also check your dwarfs' stats.  On the thoughts and preferences page, it should have some lines about "heals quickly" or "never gets sick".  Dwarfs heal at different rates, and some resist infection better than others.  AFAIK the only way to "train" those stats is by modding the values higher in creature_standard.

JMZ

[Girlinhat]

You can allegedly train up the healing trait by wounding them often.  Lots of 2 Z falls will batter the guy, and train up his wound recovery.  So I've heard, at least...

[Urist McGyver]

If I were to go through the trouble of doing that, I would just edit the raws so that dwarves had max healing rate always.(according to the wiki, that's possible. I never tried, nor I know how its done, but the wiki is the voice of armok).

I already smelt adamantine, platinum and coke out of oxigen and make platinum warhammers, which slow down dwarves with [SPEED:0], that bash goblin skulls down to their pinky toes. Oh, and they achieve legendary in any skill within 2 or maybe 3 minutes, using practice workshops. Also, their skills don't rust from lack of practice.

So I guess using exploits is a bit to much...that's just a guess

[Lamphare]

try capture some leeches......

[SalmonGod]

Nerve damage is annoying.  I have a few dwarves in the hospital who are listed as having no problems, but still list the 'resting' job. 

One broke his lower spine, but only bruised the nervous tissue.  Successful surgery repaired everything and the nervous tissue healed.  There's no evidence of any existing problems on any of his screens.  He still lays in bed for years as if paralyzed.  I've had a round of foot rot that produced similar patients.  Rotten tissue excised.  Nothing left but some scarring in the end.  Patient sleeps forever anyway.

[iyaerP]

Nerve damage is annoying.  I have a few dwarves in the hospital who are listed as having no problems, but still list the 'resting' job. 

One broke his lower spine, but only bruised the nervous tissue.  Successful surgery repaired everything and the nervous tissue healed.  There's no evidence of any existing problems on any of his screens.  He still lays in bed for years as if paralyzed.  I've had a round of foot rot that produced similar patients.  Rotten tissue excised.  Nothing left but some scarring in the end.  Patient sleeps forever anyway.

I have this problem.

I have one patient (some stupid hauler) who got his foot broke by I don't even remember what at the start of my fort.

He has now been sleeping completely healed in the hospital for over a decade.

No nerve damage, no lasting injury other than the fractured foot bone. Never woke up.

[SalmonGod]

Another problem I have:  Patients whose treatment takes too long due to too many injuries or distracted medical staff will eventually be listed as having no treatment scheduled, even though they're still laying in a hospital bed with treatable injuries.  All of their treatment is just suddenly cancelled and forgotten, though they'll still be brought food and water.  This has happened a couple times to patients who were stuck in the hospital for well over a year.

[Renzuko]

lol, my high master (now just short of legendary) mason got stabbed repeatedly by me being stupid and assigning a high lvl spearman as my captain of the guard, he lost his left arm, but he healed him, and he is still workin on making cabinets and doors for my bedrooms, waiting till he is legendary before i start getting him makin statues lol