I can't seem to find anything on this. How do you improve medical research? I have a sim in the medical career that is at level 7 or 8 and he has read every medical journal he's brought home and his performance smiley is still yellow. According to the smiley's he should be able to improve up two more to green.
I haven't tried this yet but I did think it was worth a try, the next time I play a medical sim, but try going to the library and checking every bookcase there and see if there are any medical journals in them. I've only played a medical npc that married into the family, and came with the less than perfect research, so I wasn't sure what else could be done to improve that, either. There is no option on the computer or at their work place, so the only other place I can think of is the library.
I've also noticed this. There are no medical journals at the library, you just read the medical journals you bring home. This is something interesting as it's different from other job requirements (which can improve to Green REALLY Freakin' Happy Smiley). This is one degree improvement, however, and can only be Completed, or Incomplete. If you miss reading a journal before work one day, it goes down. But if you read every single journal, it will only improve to Yellow Smiley, because it is not an extent, but a completion rating system.
Think of it like "A for effort!" Only no matter how hard you try, you're only gonna make a C, like everyone else does. Really crummy. Fortunately it doesn't affect job performance as long as you're reading your journals.
I put a sim through the med field and she made it to the top without any problems. I always had her read her medical journals and her smiley was always green. ...So I really don't know what the problem is. Have the sim reread them for a couple of hours and maybe that will help.
Yep, you get your journals every work day, and every time you head out to the hospital. But in this case, it's more a matter of persistence: Read those journals every day, every time you get them, and your performance will go up faster as long as you keep doing so.