THEME HOSPITAL - Part 2
          Played on a Playstation by Paul A. Hardy
           Playguide V1.1 by Paul A. Hardy, 1999

@~Continued from Issue 62

Planning and Building your Hospital in 18 easy steps:

Here are some useful pointers to follow when you are building your
hospital.  This method works for all Levels of the game and,
although it is not a strict code to be followed, outlines the
major decisions you should make within the game, and the
approximate times you should be doing each thing:

1. First of all, don't be afraid to visit the Bank Manager for a
loan.  It is easier to get a good hospital established early and
repay a huge debt later, than it is to try to stay within budget
and be unable to cure some of your patients.  After all, patients
who are not treated do not pay for cures, and this will have
serious repercussions on your current bank balance.
2. It is an excellent idea to turn the game speed down to the
absolute minimum before building anything, so you don't have to
worry about curing patients before you have a large, well equipped
hospital built.
3. Before building anything though, you will need to place a
Reception Desk and hire the best Receptionist you can.
Receptionists are the only members of staff you cannot sack at a
later date, so make sure she is good at her job, polite and not
prone to mistakes.  You will only be able to open your hospital on
1st January of the following year if you have a Receptionist ready
and waiting to welcome patients inside.
4. The first rooms you should build are GP's Offices, and these
should be located near the entrance and Reception Desk, due to
them being the first rooms all new patients will visit.  On Levels
1-3 you will need only two or three GP's Offices, but from Level 4
onwards you should build four or even five GP's Offices, all
grouped together.  Once they are built, staff as many of them as
you can with Consultants or Doctors with very good diagnosis
abilities.

5. Now build a single General Diagnosis room near the GP's
Offices, and equip it with a Consultant or Doctor good at
diagnosing patients, too.
6. Follow this with two Pharmacies, as near the other rooms as you
can.  (Don't worry if by this time you have had to buy an extra
one or two plots of land and run up a large debt with the Bank, as
you will easily pay it back later.) Place a Nurse in each
Pharmacy.
7. Build two Psychiatric Rooms next, near the other rooms built,
and place a Psychiatrist in one as soon as you can.  You will be
able to hire a second Psychiatrist later, if only one is available
at the moment.
8. Put as many corridor seats as you can around the rooms so far
created, so patients will not have to stand when they queue.  A
few plants in rooms and corridors would not go amiss either, as
they will help keep both patients and staff happy.
9. Next, build a Research Department and equip it with as many
Researchers as are available.  This room is the only one which
will allow more than one Doctor inside at any one time, and it is
a good idea to staff it with eight or more Researchers as soon as
you can.  The more Researchers you have in this room at any one
time, the faster you will gain the fruits of their experiments.
You should research 100% Cure Equipment first, and when this is
complete switch to 100% Diagnosis Equipment.  When this is
complete, do 5% Drug Research, and 95% Improvements until the
current hospital Level is completed.
10. Create a Staff Room now, and place at least three sofas in it.
Only one staff member will sit on each sofa at any one time, but
seated members will become less tired much more rapidly than staff
members merely standing in this room.  It is also a good idea to
provide a pool table, a television and an arcade game or two as
well, due to all these items boosting the happiness of anyone
using them.
11. Build one room of Toilets next, to stop patients becoming
desperate enough to pee on the floor.
12. Now you should create a Training room and fit it with a
projector and seven or eight seats.  If and when you can hire a
good Consultant, he should be left in here with some general
Doctors and Juniors, where he will train them in diagnosing
patients and any special skills he may possess.
13. Build an Operating Theatre and hire two well-qualified
Surgeons to staff it, if any are currently available.  Place some
corridor seating outside, for queuing patients, too.
14. Next to the Operating Theatre you should build quite a large
Ward.  Place between six and eight beds inside to save on
congestion, and staff it with a Nurse too.  Also place outside a
couple of corridor seats, in case queues for the Ward start to
form; many patients will spend a long time in the Ward, to prepare
for their operations, so there will usually be a couple of people
outside waiting to enter no matter how many beds you have in your
Ward.
15. You may now build any more rooms you have the option to, and
which haven't already been created.  Don't worry if your hospital
is spanning a large area by now and later rooms are being built a
long way from Reception.  As long as all rooms (except Facility
rooms) have corridor seating outside them, patients will not be
too worried by a long walk for treatment.
16. Hire three or four well-trained Handymen to keep your hospital
running smoothly.  Two should do nothing but clean up litter and
other messes, one should do nothing but water the plants, and one
should do nothing but simply repair machinery.  In this way, all
avenues in hospital maintenance are catered for.
17. Every month you will get an influx of new Doctors, Nurses and
Handymen on the hiring screen, and you should hire any which are
very skilled.  Do not be afraid to sack any staff who you hired
simply to make up the numbers earlier on in the Level, although it
is better to have too many staff members than too few.  Any spare
Doctors can easily be trained as Researchers, to help out in the
Research Department after all, and a spare Nurse is useful for
covering rooms when their original occupant is too tired to work
effectively and needs to spend time in the Staff Room.
18. By the end of the first year - if you switched the game speed
to a bare minimum for some of it - you should have your hospital
pretty much as you want it.  You won't have had time to research
many new rooms yet, if any at all, but you should have bought at
least one more plot of land to expand your hospital into.  Do not
be alarmed by the massive loan you will have had to take out with
the Bank, as this will quickly be repaid once your hospital is
open.  And at the end of the first year, when you receive the
message to open your hospital or not, you should allow it to open
even if not everything on this list has been accomplished yet.
Paying patients will soon start to arrive and when they do, you
will be able to start repaying your loan, reduce your interest and
begin to make a profit!

@~Next issue Paul will provide extra information on some of the
@~features of the game.












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