Personally, I don't necessarily think the medic archetype is really required, just someone who will increase medicine to legendary and pickup the skill feats associated with medicine. Medic is nice though for being able to use battle medicine more often.
That said, even with medic you can't use battle medicine to fulfill all the healing needs that are likely to happen during more severe combats. However, with potions or other means of healing that people should pick up during the course of play I don't feel you need someone to focus their spell slots on healing.
It also kind of depends on your GM. If they pile damage onto one character it's going to be much more of a problem than if they try to spread it around to everyone.
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The ooooold way of doing things was the idea that the party would be going through a lot of encounters and getting worn down so that the latter fights would be pretty exciting. Sounds cool.
But in practice, this week we're just doing months of overland travel and not a big dungeon, so we get an encounter every other lunar month of game time.
Next week we only have a three-hour session and we want do so a lot of plot stuff, but we also want to have a fight, cuz we enjoy doing those too.
So as it turns out, needing half a dozen fights to make the last one juuuust right, is not really very practical.
PF2 is pretty good for setting up an encounter that feels properly tough and challenging for a party that's still at full health. You don't need all those softening up encounters before it as a GM.
If the party has someone in the party who can heal them up to full afterwards so the next combat is also a combat at full strength, actually that makes the GM's planning easier.
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So, I've found that one healer in the party is enough, because GMs tend to shift towards being kinda relaxed about it. As long as there's a good reason why most of the time the party has no difficulty healing up to full, the GM may just let it go. Because the GM no longer needs the party to be worn out for the next encounter to be cool.
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When drawing on the experience of other people you/they might want to clarify what the expected baseline is. Tables run combats & time pressure so differently one's advice might mislead somebody else, not to mention how important tactics & shield use can be in PF2.
For example, one player mentioned how his party thrived with minimal in-combat healing against tough encounters, but they had good synergy for a blitz offense and took measures to protect wounded, and for the wounded to withdraw. That acumen is not something I'd rely on though. Other parties suck up lots of healing, often because they have mediocre AC martials up front. A shield Fighter needs a lot less healing than a Giant Barbarian.
In general, I wouldn't go into an AP without some in-combat healing magic and in the randomness of PFS, it's hard for me to shake the feeling that most every one of my PCs should be bringing emergency healing along. A Heal (or Soothe) spell can be a game changer, yet it doesn't need to be at highest level to do this so maybe get an affordable scroll. If there's nobody that can cast either, then I'd expect other issues re: condition removal.
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From my experience: At level 1-4 healing is tremendously strong. Damage is high compared to the characters' hp pool and as such you have a lot of characters going down regularly.
Starting at level 5, it changes. Going down becomes more of a rarity and you just need a few emergency healers (at least 2 as the healer can go down, too).
At level 13+, there are much more AoE effects but these ones are hard to heal (AoE Heal is hard to use and don't heal as much as single target one) and it starts to be better to think about mitigation (Shadow Siphon is a classic).
Personally, I'd still try to grab a Divine/Primal Dedication in the party and a few scrolls of Heal for emergencies. Besides that, you should be fine with a non-magical healer (Medic is quite strong as long as you don't take high damage during multiple rounds/fights).
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So, I've found that one healer in the party is enough, because GMs tend to shift towards being kinda relaxed about it. As long as there's a good reason why most of the time the party has no difficulty healing up to full, the GM may just let it go. Because the GM no longer needs the party to be worn out for the next encounter to be cool.
And when I do "limit healing" I'm actually just running a time pressure scenario, so skipping one or two 10 minute rests in favor of using some potions is typically enough to satisfy the time limit.
Medic is amazing, my Cleric has it and does way more healing with his medic abilities then anything else , and you can combine it with either a healer Alchemist or a Healer Investigator for some powerful healing as well.
Depends on your group. If you can damage things down, CC or mitigate well then just baseline medicine with feats is fine for most fights. Maybe have the group all take godless healing for more reliable in combat healing.
Spell healing is a crutch that is only really useful for when things go wrong. Casting healing instead of CC and force multiplying effects is often a waste of time and resources, but it's great to have when you come up against something that your group will struggle with.
No matter what you do don't try to be a healbot, make sure you are doing other things first and try to get a feel for how much healing you might need to pick up. Too much is better then not enough, but having been in a powerhouse group with a cleric who did nothing half the time waiting to heal (he did attack and get some amazing crit kills, but chance to hit was so low) that it can often extend fights that are otherwise too quick to use slots on.