Event
Critical Patient
Updated:
Time-bombed patient during an ambulance wave — 100 to 120 seconds to bed and stabilise.
- Trigger
- Spawns as part of an Ambulance Event surge. One or more of the arriving patients is flagged critical with a visible per-patient countdown.
- Time limit
- 100-120s
- How to handle
- Move ahead of any stable admission. Get them into a treatment bed first, then run the correct diagnosis-treatment chain before the timer hits zero.
- Failure consequence
- If the timer expires before stabilisation the patient dies in the lobby. That's a lost room slot plus a sanity hit, on top of whatever else the surge is still pressuring.
Why this is the most demanding emergency
Per the Techwiser events guide, Critical Patient is the only emergency where "full check-in and treatment process" is required inside the timer — not just stabilisation, not just a bed placement, the whole chain. Most other emergencies stop their timer on the first correct action (lay patient down, extinguish fire, apply syrup). Critical Patient doesn't.
The window is 100-120 seconds. That sounds generous until you realise you have to diagnose the patient, fetch the matching treatment item, apply it, and confirm the cure before the clock hits zero.
Where it fires
Two documented contexts:
- During a normal shift — random spawn, single patient.
- Inside an Ambulance Event — one or more of the six surge arrivals is flagged critical with a visible per-patient countdown.
The second case is the harder one because the Critical Patient timer is competing with multiple other emergencies in the same wave.
The diagnosis-first habit
Most players try to brute-force Critical Patient by grabbing common treatment items and applying in sequence. That wastes timer. Open the patient's symptom panel first, get the diagnosis, then fetch the specific item. Wrong-item applications on a Critical Patient burn 15+ seconds you don't have.
What the cost looks like if you miss
Patient death. Sanity penalty. Room slot lost for the rest of the shift. If the failure happens mid-Ambulance, the cascade compounds — you've now got five remaining ambulance arrivals plus one dead patient consequence to absorb.
Sources: Techwiser events guide, Pro Game Guides emergencies.