Rhythm is key. Use as many sounds and cadences as possible. Think of dialogue as a form of percussive music. You can vary the speed of the language, the number of beats per line, volume, density. You can use silences, fragments, elongated sentences, interruptions, overlapping conversation, physical activity, monologues, nonsense, non-sequiturs, foreign languages. Be prepared to risk your entire reputation every time you write, otherwise it's not worth your audience's time. Leaving aside the question of if high school students are “children”, I agree with the impulse. It is important not to unnecessarily terrorize people, especially children, with things (like mass shootings or cardiac arrests) which are very unlikely. I should differentiate between “mass shooter training” and bleeding control training. Mass shooter training (if a shooter comes into the school this is what we’ll do) is something which I do not believe we should be doing with young school children. It effectively terrorizes children over something that is extraordinarily unlikely, creating a fear that need not exist. It’d be like doing home invasion drills with your children, why would you want to put that thought in their heads before they are old enough to process the probability of ever being a victim of a home invasion?

Action doesn't have to be overt. It can be the steady deepening of the dramatic situation or your character's steady emotional movements from one emotional/psychological condition to another: ignorance to enlightenment, weakness to strength, illness to wholeness.Each line of dialogue is like a piece of DNA; potentially containing the entire play and its thesis; potentially telling us the beginning, middle, and end of the play. Don't be afraid to attempt great themes: death, war, sexuality, identity, fate, God, existence, politics, love. An ER doctor I followed around on my emergency medicine rotation would walk past the room of a screaming child or patient and often remark, “Welp, A and B are working.” Vary your tone as much as possible. Juxtapose high seriousness with raunchy language with lyrical beauty with violence with dark comedy with awe with eroticism. Spahn DR, Cerny V, Coats TJ, Duranteau J, Fernández-Mondéjar E, Gordini G, Stahel PF, Hunt BJ, Komadina R, Neugebauer E, Ozier Y, Riddez L, Schultz A, Vincent JL, Rossaint R, Task Force for Advanced Bleeding Care in Trauma: Management of bleeding following major trauma: a European guideline. Crit Care 2007, 11: R17. 10.1186/cc5686

Florence Nightingale was an activist, a social reformer, a statistician, and a bold nurse who defied stifling British conventions to change history. An indisputable pioneer, Nightingale died in 1910 aged of 90, leaving behind an inspirational legacy that benefits everyone’s medical care today. Keep your chops up with constant questioning of your own work. React against your work. Be hypercritical. Do in the next work what you aimed for but failed to do in the last one. C was circulation, the pumping of the heart. You had to take care of those things in that sequence to stabilize the patient. Establish an airway and respirations, then take care of the compressions. Ideas may be deeply embedded in the interactions and reactions of your character; they may be in the music and poetry of your form. You have thoughts and you generate ideas constantly. A play ought to embody those thoughts and those thoughts can serve as a unifying energy in your play.Yet, I couldn’t exit the room. The blood was now up to my knees and the liquid applied pressure to the door preventing me from opening it. At least that’s what I suspected; physics had never been my strong point. There was a high probability of other forces at work against me for the door could not be removed from its hinges either, even with the assistance of a scalpel handle. Florence dedicated her life to helping those in need. She was a trailblazer who led a group of nurses to care for wounded soldiers during the Crimean War and developed revolutionary views about hygiene and sanitation. Hailed as a heroine by Queen Victoria and the British people upon her return from the front, Florence Nightingale went on to establish the Nightingale Training School for Nurses and despite chronic illness, continued in her efforts to reform healthcare at home and abroad from her London salon. Think of information in a play like an IV drip -- dispense just enough to keep the body alive, but not too much too soon.

Language is a form of entertainment. Beautiful language can be like beautiful music: it can amuse, inspire, mystify, enlighten.For BBC Radio 4, coverage will begin with Dr Kevin Fong and Isabel Hardman in a special episode of Start the Week alongside GP Phil Whitaker and the historian Andrew Seaton. Also that week, a one-off documentary The NHS at 75: Covid Memories will reflect on the pandemic through the experience of health service staff. Write from your organs. Write from your eyes, your heart, your liver, your ass -- write from your brain last of all. You probably dropped by to see if I was going to be funny. And I'm going to disappoint you on that front. Instead, I'm going to share the thoughts of Jose Rivera ( Cloud Tectonics, Marisol, References to Salvidor Dali Make Me Hot, et al) on playwriting, a subject near and dear to my heart (not to mention my master's degree and my student loans). These are some of the most compelling thoughts about the subject I've ever read. And while it's long and probably not a topic you give a flip about ... read it anyway. It's provocative, and I promise you'll find something to think about.