This is very needed, as a healthcare worker the GTW doctor career is so disappointing, especially because somehow the only person actually working at the hospital is apparently the doctor? And as a doctor you also have to admit patients? And run their labs too? It's so...weird, and not in a fun way! There is not one single aspect of the gameplay that has anything to do with what a doctor's job actually is.
Where are the nurses, assistants, lab techs, porters, housekeeping? Why are all the 'diseases' total nonsense but then we have realistic things like diabetes devices, but only in CAS? And the diseases have no relation to sims' lifestyles, which is just bizarre. Sims can have 'surgery' and then go home straight away, as if nothing happened. i don't understand what the game's 'diseases' are meant to be, but there should be a gradient, like a different between a cold and a life-threatening disease.
In addition to your suggestions above, which are awesome, I'd love to see:
- Other medical professionals, admin, management staff etc (what is a hospital without management making your job miserable?)
- Diseases that are somewhat realistic, with gradients of seriousness; mild/moderate/severe diseases, mild being something you can self-treat by buying medicine, moderate needing treatment by doctor to be cured, and severe being something sims can die from and have some chance of being incurable
- Lifestyle diseases that sims can die from, be counselled on and learn about (healthy living skill) to reduce their chance of dying from the disease
- More than just generic 'medicine'; actual pharmacies that you can visit, even as just a rabbit hole or shop front with different medicines you can buy (although pharmacist career would be amazing), I think allergies would be a great thing to introduce for this as that's an extremely common thing, could offer 2 products to buy (daily medicine and something like an epi-pen) and could be integrated with seasons for higher chance of allergic reactions during spring
- Doctors (and nurses!) being able to counsel patients, e.g., 'counsel about healthy eating' type of thing, which could give sims skill boosts in wellness as well as a new skill (healthy living)
- The chance for sims to decline the treatment doctor offers them, something along the lines of 'discharge against medical advice' with no treatment
- More health-related gameplay, e.g., skill books on nutrition, smoothies with a blender appliance to make them, LOTS more healthy recipes and a rabbit hole 'visit dietician', similar to the therapist you can visit, to improve your healthy living skill
- Wellness Influencer career, because although they are the nemesis of real healthcare workers...they exist, in great abundance, in real life and I think it could create some fun conflict between sims, tie in with lots of other existing packs/traits, e.g. sims with the skeptic trait could have negative reactions to Wellness Influencer advice, you could create MLM clubs where you try to sell other sims your Weight Loss Tea (herbalist skill?) and recruit new members to your meeting place (small business) which sims have to pay to enter, of course owned by the Wellness Influencer club leader...there's so many ways this could add some fun chaos!
- Rabbit hole visits for things like optician, dentist, operating basically like the vets for pet sims, where you have a chance of an ailment occuring and that triggers the need for an appointment
- Fears and moodlets related to health, e.g., health anxiety after having a sickness or losing a loved one to sickness
I could go on but that's already a lot! There is so much possibility for fun gameplay with this, it's such a shame EA made a really lackluster effort with GTW.
