 Sector General was founded to promote inter @-@ species harmony , and therefore all medical staff must be prepared to treat beings with very different physiologies and behavior patterns , and sometimes with environmental requirements that would be lethal to staff without suitable protection . The hospital uses a four @-@ letter system to assign patients to wards that provide suitable environments , a classification technique used earlier by E. E. " Doc " Smith 's Children of the Lens . White 's Star Healer introduces the classification " FOKT " , which is regarded as an in @-@ joke on the name of the Glasgow science fiction club Friends of Kilgore Trout . The List of Sector General species provides a partial list of the species to be found in the hospital . 
