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[Loud Whispers]

How far do you drop them, and how bad are their injuries?  I'm afraid I might blow off their limbs and have them bleed out.

I was thinking of making a room separated with an impassable channel in the middle.  Have victims future patients stand on one side and then collapse a constructed wall into the other side, letting the cave in dust hit them.  ...Reading that, it sounds a lot more dangerous than it did in my head.

Look guys... Seriously. A retractable bridge 1~2 lvls above ground is all it takes. Add a few wooden spears at the bottom if you want more serious wounds. Guaranteed bruising at 2 lvls and/or broken bones. Risk of death very unlikely. No armour required.

[Mickey Blue]

I embark with one because I use my military as the only source of defense for my base (no traps, no walling in, etc) and play with Fortress Defense II (a mod that radically increases the rate and over time strength of sieges, meaning you get hit early and often, not just three or four years in).  I tend to have lots of injuries and having a skilled doctor to treat them often means the difference of not losing my skilled defenders to infection or other issues. 

[Broseph Stalin]

Look guys... Seriously. A retractable bridge 1~2 lvls above ground is all it takes. Add a few wooden spears at the bottom if you want more serious wounds. Guaranteed bruising at 2 lvls and/or broken bones. Risk of death very unlikely. No armour required.

I
I've had several deaths from that method, a 1z fall does nothing and a 2z fall can be more than sufficient to sever the spine and cause the victim to choke.

[Loud Whispers]

Look guys... Seriously. A retractable bridge 1~2 lvls above ground is all it takes. Add a few wooden spears at the bottom if you want more serious wounds. Guaranteed bruising at 2 lvls and/or broken bones. Risk of death very unlikely. No armour required.

I
I've had several deaths from that method, a 1z fall does nothing and a 2z fall can be more than sufficient to sever the spine and cause the victim to choke.

Meh, it's rare, and the chances are you won't be exspending useful dwarves in this method.

[Sutremaine]

Has anyone else found that having no dwarves with any Diagnostician skill prevents the Health screen from showing the statuses of otherwise healthy dwarves? By that I mean the hunger / thirst statuses not showing up (possibly infections as well, I've been a little sloppy about medical facilities lately and can't remember if those normally show up like hunger and thirst). It may be worth embarking with Novice skill just to have access to that information, though rust would be a problem. With the default settings, a Novice Appraiser / Judge of Intent is Rusty by the time the first caravan turns up and therefore unable to judge the trader's mood on the first trade. I remove rust on medical skills and tone it down for the rest of them, mostly in an attempt to clear out those skills that get used once or twice in an emergency when the skilled dwarf isn't available. Skills do vanish off the list eventually, don't they?

[Poindexterity]

probly already been said, but IF you have a dwarf in your starting 7 who "finds helping other rewarding", THEN you should make him a doctor, cause they make the best docs and they're rare, but otherwise, just take whatever's thrown at you.

[Telgin]

I'll admit to taking a doctor in my starting builds, but it's probably not necessary, for the reasons already outlined above.

Diagnostician is apparently pretty important, so I bump that up a bit.  In my current fort, I've yet to get a single immigrant with better medical skills than my starting doctor, so it seems like a decent investment so far.

Except for the fact that I've only had 1 injury in 3 years.  Oh well, self injuring dwarves feels... wrong, so I don't do that.

I did inspect personalities first though, and assigned my doc to one who found helping others rewarding and who doesn't procrastinate.  She did jump to it immediately when she was needed, so maybe it's worthwhile to do this for dwarves in case you get a great doctor immigrant who is a sourpuss and never does his job.

[Urist Da Vinci]

...
From what the forums and wiki seem to have gathered, Diagnostics is one of the the most important medical skills, as a poorly-trained diagnostician can make the wrong diagnosis, which can end up with dwarves dying. 
...

For the record and everyone's benefit, this isn't the case. There isn't a chance of "wrong diagnosis". There isn't surgery malpractice either.
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=89877.msg2505364#msg2505364
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=91420.msg2555756#msg2555756

But yes, skill at a being a doctor can reduce the time it takes for diagnosis/surgery, which can save the patient's life if infection or blood loss is involved. Dabbling doctors are just very slow at getting things done.

If you disable or reduce skill rust, then embarking with a well-rounded doctor is a good long-term investment. If you keep him alive until you start getting sieges and actual wounded patients, you can "burrow" him into the hospital to get fast treatment.

[thegoatgod_pan]

I always get a doc, diagnosers are never running around jobless in my forts.  Usually my doc is also an architect. For no particular reason except scarcity of business with that career

[daggaz]

Hmm.  Well I embarked without for once, replaced him with a craftsdwarf/machinist.   Tho now I am starting to wish I had kept 5 points in diagnostician and left the other skills blanked.  Oh heck.   For the record, I usually give building designer to my mason.  Nice to have all those constructions only waiting on one dwarf who is eating/sleeping/onbreak/hand-sitting/washing his cat.

[Blue_Dwarf]

When choosing skills on embark or adventurer's mode, I always prefer to pick the ones that are hard or slow to train.

I always take a level 5 diagnoser just because I don't get many opportunities to train it. Other people insist on picking farming or carpentry, which I find rather wasteful since a dwarf can get legendary in them very fast. I've also considered taking Teacher/Leader at embark, but haven't because there is a lack of concrete facts about how they work.

Similarly, I take a high Observer in adventurer's mode, just because it's not something you can increase intentionally.

[rhesusmacabre]

Low/no diagnosis skill may result in time wasting:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

There's another failed 'evaluated' above this too. (This dwarf has 8½ pages of treatment...the crutch has also got one kill to its name.)

Having said that, my most recent fort has had plenty of injuries (FD mod), but a very efficient hospital overall. It seems most effective just to have lots (5+) of dwarves as full doctors, rather than just a couple of specialists.

[Nan]

I embarked with a doctor for a while, but lately I haven't bothered. Soap seems to be a more critical factor than medical skill.

As for training doctors, I've found the best solution is a "very dangerous room", that is a 4-long corridor with spike traps linked to a lever. Wooden spikes invariably do significant injuries, fairly regularly lethal. Copper or silver spears can be deflected even by cloth, and even hitting naked flesh sometimes only causes bruising, but usually against a naked target will inflict some wounds requiring medical care. If the victims are assigned a helmet and breastplate uniform (replace clothing) they should survive very well.
The reason I like the very dangerous room is that it provides a higher turnaround than 2-z drops. Most injuries can be treated quickly and the dwarf is back in the VDR for another stabbing.
The spikes could potentially be hooked up to a repeater with a cycle long enough for recovery of the wounded, that way it'd just be a matter of adding recruits to the "medical victim" squad and having that squad permanently stationed in the VDR. Oh yeah and be sure to turn it off when a real medical crisis hits .

If you think this is immoral... don't worry. The dwarves like being cared for, they get way more happy thoughts from loafing around in bed than unhappy thoughts from being injured.

[Loud Whispers]

I embarked with a doctor for a while, but lately I haven't bothered. Soap seems to be a more critical factor than medical skill.

As for training doctors, I've found the best solution is a "very dangerous room", that is a 4-long corridor with spike traps linked to a lever. Wooden spikes invariably do significant injuries, fairly regularly lethal. Copper or silver spears can be deflected even by cloth, and even hitting naked flesh sometimes only causes bruising, but usually against a naked target will inflict some wounds requiring medical care. If the victims are assigned a helmet and breastplate uniform (replace clothing) they should survive very well.
The reason I like the very dangerous room is that it provides a higher turnaround than 2-z drops. Most injuries can be treated quickly and the dwarf is back in the VDR for another stabbing.
The spikes could potentially be hooked up to a repeater with a cycle long enough for recovery of the wounded, that way it'd just be a matter of adding recruits to the "medical victim" squad and having that squad permanently stationed in the VDR. Oh yeah and be sure to turn it off when a real medical crisis hits .

If you think this is immoral... don't worry. The dwarves like being cared for, they get way more happy thoughts from loafing around in bed than unhappy thoughts from being injured.

Soap does not replace a legendary doctor. Or even a novice. Doctors > Soap by far.

[cephalo]

If you disable or reduce skill rust, then embarking with a well-rounded doctor is a good long-term investment. If you keep him alive until you start getting sieges and actual wounded patients, you can "burrow" him into the hospital to get fast treatment.

How is this done exactly? Skill rust is a very good reason not to start with a doctor. Those skills are likely to rust away anyway so why bother. In every fort I end up replacing the starting doctor because he eventually becomes a peasant. I'm not interested in injuring dwarves just for doctor practice.