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[Devin]

As you have likely read, as of next release Dwarves will soon be able to stem bleeding with bandages and do other things to wounded dwarves.  In addition, there is currently already a problem in that military dwarves entering a combat will focus on fighting, while non-military dwarves will run away; there is no way to tell a dwarf to drag the wounded out of combat!  Compounding this there is the difficulty that even if a wounded dwarf is not near active combat, orders telling non-military dwarves to stay inside can still prevent him from getting help.

With the addition of medical skills and a hospital, this would be a perfect time to add a labor or a military role of combat medic; a dwarf that will enter combat only to go to wounded dwarves, perform first aid and bandaging if necessary, and carry them to the hospital or barracks.  Having the fortress physician doing such rescues by default would make him far too likely to wind up killed.  Having all military dwarves do rescues would spread medical skills too thinly among them.  If they just carry fellows back to a physician for treatment it could work, but that presents the problem of your champion carrying wounded dwarves inside the fortress when he should be out in the field fighting.

All that considered, it seems the best solution is a special military role where the dwarf assigned would grab injured, non-ambulatory dwarves, patch them up on the field if necessary, and haul them to the hospital or barracks while ignoring foes and not engaging in combat.

Thoughts?

[Bricks]

Definitely necessary for the army arc.  As for fort mode, well, civilians need to contextually decide when to "grow a pair."  Things like siege operators are just totally borked.  There are other potential jobs that would cross military and civilian duties, such as bringing supplies to the front lines, or building temporary walls to keep out attackers.  I'm not sure that the best way to handle that is to simply slap on another job.  Individual soldiers should be trainable to have a rudimentary understanding of medicine and anatomy, too.

Keep in mind that the "ahhhh go hide" button is completely redesigned in the next version, so it should be possible to send someone out to grab the injured without allowing the whole fort to start planning the most dangerous route between them and their socks.

[smjjames]

Only problem though, there is no such thing as the Geneva convention (which protects the red cross from bieng attacked in battle, generally) in DF, so even if the medic doesn't engage in combat, there is nothing stopping the enemy from engaging in combat.

[buman]

Whether or not this is a problem depends on how the new alerts are handled.

If you can set the alerts to effect only certain dwarves then you can have the order exlude healthcare/hospital or whatever the profession corresponding to moving dwarves is.

Then the dwarves will attempt to pick up the injured member but will run away if they feel they are too close to the enemy. I think this is the proper behaviour, as stated in the above post, otherwise your healthcare dwarves will get killed.Who's going to save them?

[Warlord255]

For the sorts of skirmishes we see in fort mode right now, mid-combat patching isn't very likely to happen unless you have a reprieve between siege squads. And even then, that'll be short.

I think the field bandages are just some minor mitigation that can be done by soldiers immediately after a battle or as the last survivors are being chased away, rather than stopping to fix someone while there are still ten goblins dogpiling all over your troops.

[smjjames]

Yea, I think Toady is doing something so that dwarves can do some minor patching (like stopping bleeding) on the field.

On the topic of Combat Medicine, since Toady said that hospitals are designated as activity zones (the same ones as meeting zones, sand collection, etc) and we can place them outside. So it's possible to have a field hospital of some kind. They wouldn't be mobile of course since ambulance wagons aren't in yet and tables and beds have to be placed 'inside'. Maybe it can be a small (10x5 or something maybe) lodge near your entrance where you can activate it when neccesary. It kind of depends on the new survival rate after combat or some accident.