I've been playing awhile now, and I'm largely convinced that the current rules for Medicae are poorly made and not working as intended.

First Aid allows the medic to make a medicae test with -10 per point of Crit Damage. It takes one turn and heals a fair bit. A modest medic can easily do in one turn what would take a heavily or critically wounded character days or even weeks. You probably have a 40% chance of success or better. You can do this max 1/day per person.

Extended Care allows the medic to make a +10 test on multiple people. It takes a full day, and heals a fair bit, but if you fail patients start taking highly variable amounts of damage, and heavily or critically wounded patients are likely to die.

It seems to me that you would almost never want to use extended care. It's much safer to just make a first aid check every day, and takes far less of the physician's time. Even with a high medicae skill and a single patient, you're probably about 10% likely to kill a heavily/critically damaged patient just by taking care of them, whereas leaving them alone or just giving them 5 seconds of attention per day is perfectly safe and can heal about as much.

Suggested Fixes

No possibility of damage from extended care: It's ridiculous that natural recovery with critical damage is safe, but taking your time with a moderately wounded patient has around a 1/10 chance of killing them.

Nerf First Aid (Maybe): It seems to easily and quickly produce miraculous recoveries, which renders extended care largely obsolete. You could limit it to one use per deployment/mission, rather than one per day, or don't allow its repeated use for the same old injuries. This would reflect that first aid is a quick patch for the short term problems, but some injuries require longer term attention.

If you apply " No possibility of damage from extended care " it becomes useful for critically wounded patients who might otherwise take weeks to recover. If you also "Nerf First Aid", then Extended care becomes the main source of downtime recovery for critical patients.

Note, I assume that you can't retry failed first aid checks before 24 hours, but even if your group does it differently the above should still apply.

I'd nerf First Aid by basically saying you get to try it once per wound, meaning that you can either try it as often as the other guy took damage (which can be only once, even though he's critical, or 4 times, even though he's lightly wounded) or only once, until he takes damage again (so if you're fast you can heal him after he takes the first point of damage, and then again when he takes another, but if you're slow you can only patch him up once, after the second attack, as you're always treating all his wounds at once).
Additionally, you can only apply First Aid in a very short timeframe: No using it to replace Extended Care!

I'd have to try out those rules, to see which is best...

Extended care: I think what's actually missing is a risk of dying if there's no care. It's fine that you can screw up extended care and kill people, but only if they're more likely to die if you leave them alone!

First Aid is intended to be, you know, first aid, so I say use it once and then that's it un til the person gets injured again (after the rules-mandated 24 hours have passed).

Extended treatment of someone requires, you know, how to put it, something extended.

I'd nerf First Aid by basically saying you get to try it once per wound...

I'd have to try out those rules, to see which is best...

Extended care: I think what's actually missing is a risk of dying if there's no care. It's fine that you can screw up extended care and kill people, but only if they're more likely to die if you leave them alone!

The 'once per wound' idea seems like the obvious, but more messy solution, since you have to track wounds individually. Also there comes an issue where you take a major wound, heal some by first aid, take a tiny wound, and heal back more than the tiny wound with another first aid (hence, an additional wound heals you more than it hurts you by virtue of allowing another first aid use).

A solution may be

"Record your wounds since the last time you were healed (first aid, rest, extended care, etc). First aid cannot heal you beyond this point. After you sustain any number of damaging hits, one first aid attempt can be made on you, at which point you record a new, lower number beyond which first aid can no longer heal you."

This way, first aid provides a patchup after each battle, but not a long term solution.

For example, Tim starts a day at full 12 wounds, takes a bullet which reduces him to six. A medic may attempt first aid and restore him back to 12 wounds with enough successes. Unfortunately the medic only manages to heal 3 wounds, restoring him to nine. Tim can no longer receive first aid to heal him higher than 9 until he finds some other means of healing. He takes a bullet that does 1 damage, and before he can receive first aid, another that does 4 damage, reducing him to 4 wounds remaining. He can only gain first aid once to treat both these wounds, and his squad medic fails the test. Now Tim cannot benefit from first aid again until he takes more damage or is healed. If he takes more damage, first aid can only restore him to 4 wounds or less.

I also agree with extended care having a chance to cause death if no care at all has a greater chance of causing death.

Yeah, I thought of that, but I figured that my post and my solution were complicated enough as is, and I'm loathe to introduce more record-keeping into a game.
I'd agree that it seems like the best solution.

I'd nerf First Aid by basically saying you get to try it once per wound...

I'd have to try out those rules, to see which is best...

Extended care: I think what's actually missing is a risk of dying if there's no care. It's fine that you can screw up extended care and kill people, but only if they're more likely to die if you leave them alone!

The 'once per wound' idea seems like the obvious, but more messy solution, since you have to track wounds individually. Also there comes an issue where you take a major wound, heal some by first aid, take a tiny wound, and heal back more than the tiny wound with another first aid (hence, an additional wound heals you more than it hurts you by virtue of allowing another first aid use).

A solution may be

"Record your wounds since the last time you were healed (first aid, rest, extended care, etc). First aid cannot heal you beyond this point. After you sustain any number of damaging hits, one first aid attempt can be made on you, at which point you record a new, lower number beyond which first aid can no longer heal you."

This way, first aid provides a patchup after each battle, but not a long term solution.

For example, Tim starts a day at full 12 wounds, takes a bullet which reduces him to six. A medic may attempt first aid and restore him back to 12 wounds with enough successes. Unfortunately the medic only manages to heal 3 wounds, restoring him to nine. Tim can no longer receive first aid to heal him higher than 9 until he finds some other means of healing. He takes a bullet that does 1 damage, and before he can receive first aid, another that does 4 damage, reducing him to 4 wounds remaining. He can only gain first aid once to treat both these wounds, and his squad medic fails the test. Now Tim cannot benefit from first aid again until he takes more damage or is healed. If he takes more damage, first aid can only restore him to 4 wounds or less.

I also agree with extended care having a chance to cause death if no care at all has a greater chance of causing death.

This is sound almost same that me and my group use. You can use First Aid many times per day but every failed treatment for wound stacks and waits to be healed.

Although if players are expecting to be scouting or otherwise unable to get to the base, they may use First Aid next day to see if they can heal additional wounds back.

I'm harsh GM but I know that on the long shot players start to feel depressed when they guys are almost all the time in Med-tent having treatment for their wounds.

After discussing it with the other GM and trying for a session, we're sticking with just a basic modification to first aid:

Whenever you get HP (including from first aid) that becomes your 'cap'. First aid can never heal you above this cap. So once you've been treated for a wound once, no more first aid until you're wounded again.

And removed the risk of damage from extended care.

In our game, we have had an ongoing issue with people being crippled for long periods of time and unable to recover quickly enough. Sometimes PCs who burn a Fate Point to survive can be left more or less useless for a session or two before they can make it back to base, and that's just not fun (for our group, at least). This is especially an issue for the melee-oriented characters in the party. In response to those issues, and the issues raised in this thread, I just decided to give everyone Hardy. They still suffer the gruesome critical effects, but no one is left sitting out a couple of sessions. This gets them back into action faster (and burning more Fate Points!)