Theme Hospital/Staff

Nothing will happen in the hospital unless you employ some staff. There are four basic types of staff in Theme Hospital - doctor, nurse, handyman and receptionist. Each type of staff is equally essential to give any chance of a successful hospital.

Staff Management
It is important to keep your staff happy at all times. If they become very unhappy (below 50% happiness), they will start to get angry and eventually ask for a pay raise. If you get the staff back to over 75% happiness before this happens, they will gradually calm down as long as their happiness level doesn't drop again.
 * Larger rooms can be harder to manage and heat and therefore are not always better.
 * Heaters keep staff happy if correctly set. Being too cold or too warm doesn't make the staff unhappy but anywhere between 20% and 80% makes them comfortable and increases their happiness by 1% every game tick. For 4x4 rooms, one heater gives 76% - even if the game claims they are hot, it's the perfect temperature to move around a freezing hospital. Staffers don't catch colds!
 * Tiredness starts damaging happiness from 30% and up. Staffers overworking themselves quickly become upset. If you spot any crazy staff, adjust the settings and immediately place them in the Staff Room. Grant them one or two bonuses to quickly get them back to full happiness while you work on the problem.
 * Dead plants and litter make both patients and staff unhappy. Keep your hospital clean.

These are the fair wages your staff is expected to be given (and the market values when hiring new staff). On the first day of every month, if the staff is given the correct wage or more, they become happier. If their wage is lower (this is usually the case for doctors skilling in the GP's Office or Training room), they lose happiness instead. Difficulty affects this (+20/+15/+10 and -10/-15/-20) but the overpaid or underpaid amount does not matter. Skill is defined on a scale of 1000 points.

$$\text{Wage} = \text{Base} + \text{Qualifications} + \frac\text{Skill}{10}$$

Base:
 * Receptionist $20
 * Handyman $25
 * Nurse $60
 * Junior $75
 * Doctor $105
 * Consultant $205

Qualifications:
 * Researcher +$20
 * Psychiatrist +$30
 * Surgeon +$40

You can grant staff a cheap, one-time 10% bonus to give them a boost to happiness. Only use permanent 10% wage increases as a last resort or if you intend to overpay them in the first place. If staff morale keeps decreasing even with a fair wage, they are unhappy with their working environment.

Doctor
Doctors are required for diagnosis, surgery, psychiatry and research. You need at least one - and a very good one at that - for your GP's Office. Doctors come with or without qualifications (Research, Surgery and Psychiatry) and with various skill levels. See which rooms need which qualifications below.

There are three levels of experience measured with a green skill meter ranging from 1 to 1000:


 * Junior (1-249): Stethoscope (left) arrow. Moves very slowly. Perfect for training.
 * Doctor (250-799): Medkit (middle) arrow. Faster than juniors and more efficient.
 * Consultant (800-1000): Car (right) arrow. Very fast, efficient and expensive. Can train doctors and juniors but cannot get trained. Can diagnose most diseases in the GP's Office, saving time and resources while gaining valuable experience.

Different Qualifications are needed in each room. Ensure you have enough doctors to cover every room, then while a room isn't being used you can rest them, swap them around etc. depending on their tiredness.

Doctors, of any sort, are required in the GP's Office, General Diagnosis, Cardiogram, Scanner, Ultrascan, Blood Machine and X-ray diagnosis rooms. Some treatment rooms and clinics will require specialists, such as the Operating Theater which needs two surgeons, or the Psychiatry Room which needs a doctor with the psychology qualification. Only doctors with a Research qualification can work in the Research Department, and a Consultant is needed to teach in the Training Room.

Remember that Doctors with Qualifications can do Normal Doctors jobs as well if needed.

Nurse
This time only Women are available to take the role of the nurse. These will be needed to cure quite a few diseases you will come across at an early stage. As with doctors, nurses with a higher attention-to-detail and skill level will make fewer mistakes. Rest them when required and keep them happy for better results. There are no extra qualifications a nurse can have.

Nurses are required in the Pharmacy, Ward and Fracture Clinic.

Handyman
Handymen help keep the place tidy, water the plants and repair equipment. You will tend to have as many handymen as you have doctors in cure or diagnosis rooms. As usual go for high attention-to-detail for better service - and they'll also move around the hospital dealing with plants, litter and machine repairs more quickly.

You should also change the settings to give one caretaker full priority for one task, another with full priority for another task and so on, to make sure that you have a dedicated handyman for each area of their abilities.

Receptionist
The MOST essential part to any hospital. Without her no-one would come to your hospital. Make sure you hire someone with high stats, as they'll deal with new visitors to the hospital more quickly, and assign them to the correct room. Not really much to do with them, they don't even need a rest at the staff room. Each receptionist needs a desk to stand behind.