Keith D. Wilson, MD, is an American physician and writing-craft author whose two Writer's Digest Howdunit titles are among the most-recommended medical references for crime and mystery writers. He co-wrote Code Blue: A Writer's Guide to Hospitals, Including the ER, OR, and ICU (1999) with David W. Page, MD, Professor of Surgery at Tufts, and authored Cause of Death: A Writer's Guide to Death, Murder, and Forensic Medicine (1992).
Code Blue takes novelists inside the modern hospital department by department, covering the sights, sounds, smells, dialogue, and operational reality of the emergency room, operating room, intensive care unit, and supporting departments. Wilson and Page draw on their combined clinical experience to give writers the specific detail that separates believable medical fiction from television-style shorthand: how the trauma team actually talks during a code, what surgeons prepping for an operation actually do and in what order, what the bedside monitoring on an ICU patient actually shows, and the medical jargon, terminology, and shorthand that fills every page of a real chart.
Cause of Death gives mystery and crime writers the underlying medical and forensic facts of how death is investigated: the mechanisms of death from different causes, what an autopsy actually reveals, how time of death is estimated, the differences between gunshot, blunt-force, sharp-force, asphyxial, and poisoning deaths in the autopsy suite, and the procedural reality of the medical examiner's role from scene through court testimony. The book is widely used in crime, thriller, and medical thriller writing programs.
