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Hello. I don't see this answer in any forum threads or reviews. One of the issues we had playing past editions had to do with healing times in the game. We thought they were realistic, but they would sideline PCs for weeks or months of game time. How does medicine work, in general, in the new edition? I honestly don't know what answer I'm hoping for.

Why it's sidelining?
Your PC has critical injury? Good! Now he mus think what to do to make thing happens and don't overdo yourself.

Worst case scenario is 24 days (can be cut to 12 Days) of inactivity. You can also skip few days with "Days are passing, now you know truth ,not "Action" is worst in solder life. Waiting is killer of soul, a constant uncertainty of enemies next moment..."

So it sounds like it's fairly similar to Alien. I have those rules, I'll read up there.

In previous editions, you were just out for weeks, and there was essentially nothing you could do. The last time we played Twilight 2000 my character (the doctor) looked over a hill in the first round of combat, first roll of the game and took a .50 SLAP to the head. I left to go get drinks for everyone one. When I got back I found out the only other person with a medic skill had crawled under a tank, someone had popped thermite on the tank, the thermite had burned through, and incapacitated both arms and one of his legs. We lost both people capable of performing any medical checks in 20 minutes and it would take months of real-world playing time for those injuries to heal. Practically, the medic would never recover before we made it to some significant medical facility in Poland, and that would take more than a dozen sessions.

Since totally realistic wound/healing systems would not be very much fun gamewise, I approach the crit healing rules from gaming perspective. And imo they work perfectly: yes they do hurt and affect the character but they do not totally make him unplayable. The penalties are there but they aren’t overwhelming.
Depending on how fast your game time flows, the average critical will affect the character for a few sessions. Amd they force players to make decisions: is the medic going to treat this critical to shorten the healing time or should he go hunt because we need food and so forth.

2-4 sessions seems to be the average healing time in my campaign, which is enough to make players think twice about using firearms for solving problems while still allowing the game to include firefights and combat with some occassional tactical mistakes by players as well.

Since totally realistic wound/healing systems would not be very much fun gamewise, I approach the crit healing rules from gaming perspective. And imo they work perfectly: yes they do hurt and affect the character but they do not totally make him unplayable. The penalties are there but they aren’t overwhelming.
Depending on how fast your game time flows, the average critical will affect the character for a few sessions. Amd they force players to make decisions: is the medic going to treat this critical to shorten the healing time or should he go hunt because we need food and so forth.

2-4 sessions seems to be the average healing time in my campaign, which is enough to make players think twice about using firearms for solving problems while still allowing the game to include firefights and combat with some occassional tactical mistakes by players as well.

Interestingly enough, my players have been exceedingly careful in how they engage enemies, but they almost never go for the peaceful option.
They just set up very well thought-through ambushes and avoid completely if outnumbered in general.
I think it's because they come from Mutant: Year Zero, and now suddenly they have massive firepower at their hands.

So they know the risks, but they also know what overwhelming firepower can do to an unprepared enemy.