Patient Treatment Workflow

The game doesn't have an in-game tutorial for patient treatment. This page is the missing tutorial.

There are two halves: the 6-step workflow that applies to every patient, and the condition → item table that tells you what to administer.

The 6-step workflow

Every regular patient — the non-anomaly kind — moves through these six steps from check-in to discharge. The order is fixed; skipping a step is the most common cause of "Patient Expired" screens.

1. Check-in

The patient arrives at the front desk. Verify their identity in two places:

• Live camera feed — the in-game monitor at the desk.
• Photo record — the printed photo they hand you on check-in.

The two should match. If they don't, this isn't a treatment problem; this is a Camouflage Guy (Skinwalker) problem. Reject the patient and reach for the Fire Extinguisher. See How to Survive for verification discipline.

If the IDs match, proceed.

2. Observation

After check-in, the patient gets a status HUD entry. Read it. The HUD will name the condition — Dehydration, High Fever, and so on. The condition name is the only input you need for the next step.

If the HUD shows no condition but the patient still acts distressed, you're probably looking at a Mad Patient or Fainting Patient. These aren't treated with the normal workflow — see the linked anomaly pages for counters.

3. Procurement

Walk to the right supply zone and grab the matching item:

• Supply Room (shelves A and B) — bulk treatment items like the IV Bag and Maple Syrup.
• Med-cart in the Surgery Room — fine-grained items like Cooling Gel, Smelling Salts, Calming Meds.
• Wall-mounted stations — the Fire Extinguisher (free, reusable, refilled at the station).
• Utility Closet — the Mop, free.

Cost is paid out of your shift budget. Plan ahead — running out of credits mid-shift is a real failure mode.

4. Administration

Move the patient (or the item) to the correct room:

• IV Room for any IV-based treatment.
• Surgery Room for items requiring a stable bed (Cooling Gel, Calming Meds).
• The patient's current room for items like Smelling Salts.

Use the item on the patient. The HUD shows an "Applying" state.

5. Monitoring

Watch the patient's status gauge. The gauge fills until it crosses the "Recovery" line, which is the green threshold on the HUD. Don't leave until it crosses — moving them too early triggers a re-treatment cycle and wastes inventory.

The monitoring window is the most dangerous window in the loop because you're stationary. Don't camp it any longer than necessary — see Sanity Management on room rotation.

6. Discharge

Once Recovery is hit, escort the patient to the exit door. Discharge is logged in your shift counter. That counter is what unlocks the next shift, so missed discharges hurt twice — once for the patient, once for progression.

Condition → item cheat sheet

This is the table to memorize. There are only two confirmed conditions today, and both map to one item.

| Condition | Item | Where to get it | Cost | Difficulty | |---|---|---|---|---| | Dehydration | IV Bag | Supply Room shelf B | 15 Credits | Easy | | High Fever | Cooling Gel | Med-cart, Surgery Room | 10 Credits | Moderate |

The community has documented more conditions in YouTube footage but not all of them are confirmed against verified sources yet. The full list lives at /wiki/conditions and is marked with confidence badges so you know what's reliable.

What goes wrong if you treat the wrong way

• Dehydration, untreated → patient health rapidly declines → "Patient Expired" screen → 1 strike.
• High Fever, untreated → patient slips into delirium / seizure → becomes prone to anomaly possession → potentially spawns an anomaly inside your hospital. This is worse than letting them die.
• Wrong item on wrong condition → not always fatal, but always wastes the item and the treatment slot. Re-stocking takes time you don't have.

The decision rule: if the HUD doesn't show a condition you recognize, don't treat. Open the Conditions index, look up what you're seeing, then come back. Guessing is more expensive than pausing.

Adjacent pages

• How to Survive — the 14 reflex tips for anomalies that interrupt the workflow.
• Sanity Management — why you can't camp the monitoring step.
• Emergency Solver — interactive tool for when you can't remember which item counters which anomaly.