Doctor Career: Symptoms and Illness List

[officialghosts]

I've been playing with the Doctor Career recently, and have become increasingly frustrated with it. It seemed almost impossible to correctly diagnose a sim as the results were almost never narrowed down to one, and any guides on the diseases I found online offered incomplete or even outright incorrect information. After another diagnosis failed, I decided to take matters into my own hands. I started a new file, joined the doctor career, got out a pen and paper, and got to work.

Some parameters before I get started:
I played with a single young adult sim fresh out of CAS. I placed her on the Oakenstead lot using freerealestate.
I used testingcheats on to max out her Doctor career and Logic skill and give her enough aspiration points to purchase mood based rewards (Never Weary, Steel Bladder, etc.) These were the only rewards I purchased.
I didn't play with her at all really except at work and to pay bills. Her moods were kept up using rewards and testingcheats. This file was simply to record the diseases and symptoms, not anything else.
Aging off, Free Will on.

Let’s get started, shall we?

First off, some random observations about the Doctor career:

• Leveling logic is very important to this career. My other doctor had mid-level logic, and would often receive nothing from the analysis of a patient’s sample. With max logic, this doctor never failed at analysis, which was incredibly useful because…
• ...while treating the patients, I worked out a process for diagnosis. I would start out by swabbing a patient, and then go and analyze their sample. While analyzing the sample, I would watch the patient for signs of symptoms. After analyzing (which when successful would give enough for a weak diagnosis), I would return to the patient and perform one the the other examination options. (Take Temperature, Check Eyes, etc). I’d only perform one, because after only one successful interaction it would narrow down the diagnosis options even further. At this point i’d do one of two things; take them to the x-ray/treadmill to narrow down the diagnosis options even further, or immediately diagnose them. I did the latter near the end of my tests when I was familiar enough with the symptoms to use process of elimination.
• There were a few times when, after performing all these tests successfully, my diagnosis options would be narrowed down to 1. This was rare, however, and I wouldn’t rely on that happening. You’re going to need to be familiar with the symptoms or a good guesser to reliably and efficiently diagnose sims.
• My doctor never failed at treating a sim or performing surgery. I don’t think it’s possible, but it might just be because my sim was level 10 in her career and logic.
• Of the 35 patients I tested, I never had a case where there was “No Illness”.
• I’ve seen guides list thought bubbles as indications of certain illnesses. My experience with the career has led me to believe this isn’t true, or is mostly random enough that it’s not helpful. I think the thought bubbles just indicate “Hey, I’m sick.”
• Something I believe is a glitch; if a patient had rashes, they would often lose them during treatment. (This especially happened if I was handling multiple patients at once.) My only suggestion is making note of a patient’s rash early if they have one.
• Successful X-Ray and Treadmill tests can be used to discover aliens.

• ...even if they weren't in disguise.

[officialghosts]

Okay, now onto the diseases themselves! I’ll first start by listing the diseases, and the symptoms I commonly found associated with them. Then I’ll explain the symptoms themselves.

NOTE: Even with a fairly large test group, (35 patients), it's likely that my data doesn't cover everything. Some diseases I only encountered a handful of times, and randomness and glitches might've prevented me from seeing all the symptoms and rashes. Don't hold this list as law, but just a strong guildline open to suggestions and changes.

Bloaty Head
This was one of the two most common diseases, at least in my game file.

Rashes: None
Symptoms: Headache, Steam Blowing Out of the Ears.

Burning Belly
This was incredibly uncommon. Only one patient of 35 had this, so the data might not be as complete for this one as the others.

Rashes: None
Symptoms: Fever, Stomach Ache

Gas & Giggles
Less common than the other non surgery diseases. Seemed weirdly lacking in supposed symptoms, but a good indication of this disease if if the sim if Playful. You can find this out by talking to them or just by observing their idle animations (lots of laughing. lots.)

Rashes: Tiger Stripes
Symptoms: Stomach Ache

Itchy Plumbob
Not as rare as Burning Belly, but still rather rare. The way to tell this apart from Sweaty Shivers is the presence of Tiger Stripes and lack of a Fever.

Rashes: Tiger Stripes
Symptoms: Itchiness

Llama Flu
A relatively common disease. Fairly easy to tell apart from the others, as it only shares it’s symptoms with Triple Threat, without Swirls and sometimes with a Fever.

Rashes: Orange and Green Spots, None
Symptoms: Fever, Coughing, Sneezing

Starry Eyes
Also relatively common, and easy to recognize due to the Dizziness (which features the eponymous stars) and the weird Swiping, which is shares with no other disease.

Rashes: Swirls, None
Symptoms: Dizziness, Swiping

Sweaty Shivers
If Bloaty Head isn't the most common, this is. The only disease aside from Itchy Plumbob to experience Itchiness, and far more common.

Rashes: Orange and Green Spots, None
Symptoms: Fever, Itchiness

Triple Threat
Like the other two surgery diseases, this one is rather uncommon. Can be differented from Starry Eyes by the lack of Swiping and Llama Flu by the lack of Fever.

Rashes: Swirls, Orange and Green Spots
Symptoms: Dizziness, Coughing

Since I don’t believe there are official names for any of the symptoms, I referred to them by what I believe their real life equivalents are. I’ve decided to add brief descriptions and picture of all of them (along with the rashes) to make sure anyone using this info knows what I’m referring to.

First, the rashes:

Swirls


Orange and Green Spots


Tiger Stripes



Now the Symptoms:

Coughing/Sneezing
Unfortunately, I don’t have an image of coughing or sneezing, but they look exactly like their real life counterparts. Indicates Llama Flu or Triple Threat.

Smoke out the Ears
Again don’t have images, but this one is possibly the most obvious. You’ll know it when you see it. Indicates Bloaty Head.

Itchiness
Again, no good image. Sims itch their chest and legs. Indicates Sweaty Shivers or Itchy Plumbob.

Dizziness


Stars whirl around the head. Indicates Starry Eyes or Triple Threat.

Fever


Sims wipe their forehead and fan themselves. Indicates Llama Flu, Burning Belly, or Sweaty Shivers.


Headache


Rings appear around a sim’s head and throb. Indicates Bloaty Head.

Stomach Ache


Sims rub their stomach as if nauseous. Indicates Gas & Giggles or Burning Belly.

Swiping


Possibly the weirdest symptom. Sims swipe at the air and then look very confused, as if they weren’t controlling themselves. Indicates Starry Eyes.

Glowing


Most likely not a symptom, but something I included because I had never noticed it before. Only occurs with aliens, so it might just be something I hadn’t noticed before. (ETA: This is indeed not a symptom! Aliens just glow when they're 'Very' whatever emotion. They do this in human disguises, too, so it's useful for determining if someone's an alien!)

If any one has any additional thoughts/observations, let me know. I'd love to hear them. 

[Carl]

It's an incredible amount of info you've shared. I am grateful, as it will definitely save me some time. I need to load a new Doctor myself so that I make sure I am able to diagnose them using my list + yours, then I'll edit the page. I'll try to do this one soon because it's a popular Career and it's clear I didn't have a large enough sample size myself. There is another post with more info, and I'll try to combine all of this so that people can successfully diagnose. It's way more complex than the usual Careers and make everything else look easy. I really liked it, but it can definitely be frustrating. The pics of specific symptoms will be very useful to players, and I'll likely make some kind of collage out of them to show people what they look like. I assume you are OK with that, since you posted it here, and I thank you for taking the time to share with us.

[officialghosts]

Oh, it's no problem! A lot of this was for myself, but I was sure other simmers were experiencing similar frustrations, so I was happy to share. In regards to the career itself, I agree; the Doctor career is way more complex than even the other active ones, but it's a lot of fun once you know what you're doing.

And yes, feel free to use the pictures. It's going to be a little weird seeing my sims on the guide! 

[Playalot]

What a great post officialghosts! Thank you so much for sharing. This is exactly what I have been looking for. I wonder if the glowing around the aliens is just their normal glowing that they do when they experiences any emotion at the 'very' level? (i.e. very happy etc). I was quite confused about some of these symptoms as no matter how intently I looked at the sick sims I couldn't really see anything apart from the occasion sim with stars. I could see rashes on the sims when they were in the waiting room/receptionist area but nothing when they were on the beds. I also was leaving the analysis as the last thing so I'm hoping that doing this early on, as you suggest makes a difference. 

[officialghosts]

Thanks Playalot! Glad to help.

The glowing might be that. I only included it because I had never seen it before, as I've had pretty much no play time with aliens. And yeah, the other symptoms can be kinda hard to catch, especially the ones that don't have any special effects (stars, steam, etc.) This first few times I saw the swiping motion were really confusing; I wasn't sure what it could possibly be a symptom for, but it seemed WAY too strange for an idle animation! My best tip is to just play on speed 1 and watch the patient constantly.

I always went with analysis first as I felt it was an easy way to narrow down my options. I can't ensure it was the best option, but by the end of my testing doing that combined with watching the patient and a simple interaction was enough for me to correctly diagnose the patient.

[Nettlejuice]

I haven't even begun to play the doctor career yet and this will come in handy, especially as people are reporting bugs or not making progress. I really want to have a doctor for my dynasty and don't want to fail yet again for not getting promotions. Thank you for the time and effort this guide took <3

[officialghosts]

@Nettlejuice: Thank you! <3

I can relate to your concerns. The main reason I made this guide in the first place was because the founder of my ID was a doctor and I was worried about her getting demoted/not getting promoted fast enough due to constantly misdiagnosing patients. On the other hand, I only failed one diagnosis during this test and by the end of it my sim had gotten a raise/filled up her performance bar 7 times!

[oshizu]

I also have been putting off the doctor career because the bits and pieces I'd read about so far seemed so confusing.
The way you organized your information into tips, diseases and symptoms with images, however, makes a lot of sense.

Does each disease always require the same treatment?

Thank you so much for organizing your notes on the Doctor career into these posts and sharing them with us.

[officialghosts]

@oshizu Thanks! I'm glad it's so helpful.
Yes, you always treat diseases the same way. As far as I can tell once you diagnose the rest of the treatment is as simple as a click of a button. You're walled off from all but one treatment option and can't rediagnose a sim. I don't believe it's possible for treatment to fail, unless your diagnosis was incorrect, obviously. 

Another thing to note that I forgot to mention. If you save and quit out without diagnosing, the patients will not always have the same illness they did the last time you played. Just a warning. (For those who need to stop playing during work,and those who thought they were gonna waltz through the career by save scumming it.)

[Playalot]

Just thought I'd mention that my sim has maxed logic and she often fails at analysis and at even taking the swabs! She is always very focused. I think she is just a really bad doctor!  Despite performing all the tests she often has three illness left to choose from and with little or no symptoms from the patients it's just one big unhappy guessing game. Ugh. She's level 8 now.

[Nettlejuice]

@Playalot Hope the new patch fixes it so you can deliver a nooboo, I know when my Sim goes for a hospital birth I'd much rather have Zahra attend to her, lol.

[officialghosts]

@Playalot I'm 99% certain my sim never failed her analysis. I'm unsure if this is a glitch on either of our files, or me just getting incredibly lucky. Maybe it's because my sim was level 10 in her career?

I'm sorry to hear you're still having trouble. I think how often symptoms appear might be (unintentionally) file dependent, as I felt like symptoms showed up a lot more often in my test file than my dynasty file. However, this is just a guess, as I didn't actually test or look into that part of it.

[Playalot]

I think the most frustrating part is nearly all the patients have no symptoms. Or if the have some, such as a rash or stars, the symptoms disappear once they sit on the beds. Occasionally I have managed to get a diagnosis down to one illness but with disappearing symptoms it's rather difficult to tell what's wrong with them. I thought perhaps the focused pictures I hung all around the hospital might be overriding their illness symptoms so I took them down. It didn't make a difference!  Unfortunately because this is my dynasty file I can't really do anything else than stumble along doing my best to fill each work days task bar without ever curing an illness as I can't take the chance it's wrong and therefore lose progress. lol, the hospital fills up with diagnosed but untreated sim's. 

So far no nooboo to deliver either. Going on two sim weeks now...I keep telling myself a pregnant sim will appear tomorrow!  I'm quite sure that a different file would result in quite a different doctor experience.

[Carl]

@amaiyasai @officialghosts I just heavily updated Doctor's symptoms and diseases section, and was successful in using the symptoms list to diagnose my own patients. Amaiyasai provided some info on missing illnesses, and I took their rash evidence to be true because of randomness in the game. I DID have a patient with no illness, so even though 35 is a big number of samples we've just got so many possibilities here. I'd treated a good number myself and still missed a couple of diseases in the first version.

 I think the core symptom list is very very good, so thank you officialghosts for all your work on this post. It will help a lot of people over the years, so you've effectively cured many Sims with your work here. I put in a few tips you guys posted as well as one of my own (ending interaction with them to get them to do idle animations).

I think you will like what I did with your images, as opposed to making some collage. That would have been to hard to see. What they can do is look at the pics to get ideas of illnesses, then go to the list above and compare the diseases to figure out which it is.