First, Do No Harm

Brier Hospital #1

by Lawrence W. Gold

On the surface, Dr. Joseph Polk is successful: intelligent, charismatic, and a powerful member of the medical staff at Brier Hospital in the San Francisco Bay area. He’s also a functional psychopath who has now decompensated and is killing his patients. He doesn’t plan to kill them, and no gun, knife, poison or injected drug is involved. They die anyway.

Nurses and front-line physicians see Polk's indifference, incompetence, stubborn cruelty, and evil but everyone turns a blind eye, leaving patients paying with their lives.

That is, until Jack Byrnes joins the team at Brier Hospital. His training in Intensive Care Medicine has prepared him to care for patients, but nothing prepares him for the likes of Joseph Polk. Now he is left to defend the lives of vulnerable patients while up against evil and a system bent on protecting it. Who will win?

"First, Do No Harm" shows the struggles of patients and physicians against the power of evil.

Genres: Thriller, Fiction, Medical Thriller, Mystery Thriller, Suspense, Mystery, Medical

308 pages, Paperback

First published April 11, 2007

About the author

Lawrence W. Gold, MD is a retired physician. He is a veteran of the Vietnam War where he served in an evacuation hospital, ran an emergency room and was a Battalion Surgeon. He completed his training in internal medicine and diseases of the kidney in 1968.

He retired in 1995 after 23 years in a hospital-based practice caring for patients with complicated illnesses and served as Chief of Medicine. After retirement he and his wife, Doris, spent time sailing at sea. He has written three screenplays based on his novels. His screenplay for Rage won honorable mention at the 80th annual Writer's Digest contest. He lives in Grass Valley, CA with his wife.

Reviews

[Lynda]

Book would have ranked 5 stars but for errors. Probably editing error -- a word left over so a sentence ends up with two "will" ... and a letter "...from t Raby." A segment with missing word or words "...John McPherson attracted and repelled Janet me."

This is not an easy book to read. The following is on the cover of the book:

If you believe that television, movies, or medical fiction, accurately portray what it's like to be an acute care physician or a critically ill patient in a hospital today, think again.

Written by a doctor as the voice of a doctor in the book (he's a good guy), be prepared to be scared. I couldn't read another book like this for a little bit. Has a good doctor gone bad? Or had he already been bad but got away with it? Even when the hospital finds out he has truly harmed -- no, he has done more than just harm -- patients, will they protect their own or do something about it? A riveting book.

[Bob]

A private hospital is plagued with the poor performance of one of its long Doctors. He makes poor or miss diagnosis, he berates nurses how try to bring problems with his patients, he is often unavailable when called about his patients conditions and is generally disliked. Dr. Jack Byrne is a fairly new member of the hospital staff and is acting as a general internist and consultant and he is the focus that the story returns too as it chronicles the history of various patients of the disliked Dr. that he has had to step in and try to reverse fife threating conditions brought on by Drs. poor treatment. The story follows the several cases as the hospital board works to try to get rid of the bad egg, but it’s not an easy task as the reader will find out. I had to get used to the way it jumped from case descriptions to Jack’s personal life and thoughts but aside from some editing work needed, it was a decent read.

[Lynda Kelly]

Not for me in this state. Full of mistakes and I wasn't prepared to persevere. He seems to want to use big words and flowery sentences without getting the basics right as well which is irritating. I'd seen enough by page 13 !!
Page 1 we have this-"Steve loved Laura's warm genuine smile gave her and earthly quality"......makes no sense at all. Then the word crakin' used in place of crackin' and lightening not lighting.
The flowery stuff like 'entrapped by their own personas' and 'after the coarse buzz' to describe a call button....annoying in the extreme. Got to this sentence on page 13 and gave up-"I finally achieving the knowledge and experience to justify the responsibility I wielded on a daily basis" employed the big words while getting the tense wrong....just not right. Needs a proper proofreading exercise done.
I had a lot of this series downloaded as free ones but paid for this first one so was less than impressed !

[David Donaghe]

This was a good read if you like medical reads and hospital stories.

[Catriona]

The medical detail was interesting and no doubt authentic, but it’s such a shame that this book hadn’t been edited. The constant typos, grammatical errors, and brutal changes from the first to third person and back again, sometimes within the same sentence, detracted from what could have been a much better story.

[Michelle A. Nash]

First , Do No Harm

A young doctor goes up against an established and well known physician after patients begin dying and/or developing complications in his care. Dr. Gold does an admirable job of making the mystery of medicine comprehensible for all readers.

[Catherine Nightlinger]

Excellent!

This is an excellent example of how hard it is to remove dangerous Doctors from practicing medicine and the equally dangerous attitude that some Drs ger that is known as the God syndrome.

[Teresa Gagean]

Excellent

One of the best books I have read in a long time! I can’t wait to read more! As a nurse I emphasized with the nurses and doctors in this book! Excellent!

[Linda]

Read this one first in the Briar Hospital Series as dedicated professionals root out a bad actor in their ranks. Great reading!

[Deborah Fertakis]

The writer was good, story moved quickly. Editing was surprisingly poor. Enough to be distracting.

[Esmeralda]

I enjoy medical shows so I liked this book.
"The doctor is often more to be feared than the disease" French proverb.
Jack Byrnes is a specialist in intensive care who is new to Brier Hospital, a private community hospital. He has been specially trained to deal with the sickest patients. Unfortunately some of these patience have arrived in this unit because of physician negligence.

Dr. Joe Polk is popular with HMOs because of his ability to see the most patients in the shortest amount of time. His patients love him and he even has his own radio show. But many of his patients are winding up in ICU. He is condescending to nurses, ignores their recommendations and is impossible to reach when there is an emergency.

Jack Byrnes and Warren Davidson, the chief of medicine want to stop Dr. Polk before he harms more patients. But they are facing a tough fight with the hospital bureaucracy.

[Jina Howell-Forbes]

Great Series, great book. This is the first book in the Brier Hospital Series. I read one of the later books in the series without knowing it was part of a series, so I must admit that I know that the writing gets even better and the stories get more complex as the series progresses. That said, this is a really good book. It is a medical procedural novel, with a lot of details about specific diseases and treatments. If those thing are not of interest, then the story will probably not be worthwhile. But there actually is much more to the story than the medical stuff, because it is also a murder mystery. Although for me, the murder mystery was the least interesting aspect. In addition to the medical issues, I really appreciated the attention to the details of the relationships among the staff. The book has a little bit of everything, and the best part is, I know the subsequent books in the series it get even better.

[Elaine]

It's difficult to believe that a person could be guilty of the type of behavior Dr. Joe Polk is guilty of and yet remain aloof and without remorse. His patients suffer at his hands while he maintains nonchalance and an innocent attitude.

Though probably not a page-turner, First Do No Harm moves along at more than a casual pace as we follow the medical conditions of some seriously ill patients from their first symptoms and phone calls to Dr. Polk, to their hospital care and beyond. The reader gets a sense of the frustrations of the nursing staff in dealing with Dr. Polk as he demeans them and is slow in returning phone calls. He's downright rude and obnoxious. At times, even to his patients.

Some romance.

[Donna Sheldon]

Scared me to death. Maybe because I've encountered my share of Dr. Joe Polks in my long life. My father recommended this book to me. He was a former hospital administrator and had struggled for years,trying to oust bad doctors from his hospital. First, my sister read it. She's a nurse practitioner and kept nodding her head all the way through this. Then I read it, with a different perspective. This is a reminder, folks, that it's okay to fire your doctor, and many people don't, when they should.

Word has it that Dr. Gold has another Brier Hospital story coming out any day now. For sure, I'll be picking that one up.

[Douglas Castagna]

Plagued with editorial issues, this story, which seemed like it would be a fast and interesting read drags on almost interminably. I put it down several times and kept trying to come back to it, even reading other books in between, but it was all for naught. I was not able to finish this even getting two thirds through. It was a chore.

[Alyssa]

I enjoyed this book off and on, because it gave me a bit of insight into the doctor 's world, but sometimes it got a bit too technical. It was listed as horror, but it was more like a slow thriller. I'm sorta bummed that I bought the other books now.

[Theresa]

Medical mystery

I am glad I read book 2 before I read book 1. The story line was good but a lot of the negotiations and meetings were to long and drawn out. That is the reason for my lower rating.

[Linda B]

Unfortunately, in my opinion this author has a deep-seated hatred for Christians as is evident in all of his books. After reading this book, I did not expect the same theme in another.

[Therese]

$0.0

[Amanda]

Terrible.

[Karen]

Good book. Fast paced, medical story line. True to life characters.

[Karen B]

How well do you know and trust your doctor? I enjoyed this book.

[Elaine]

This was a decent read, but sometimes it was hard to follow as the description of the several cases jumped around.

[Bex]

Brier Hospital series

[Ann]

I enjoyed this audiobook. If you like medical thrillers it will hold your interest!

[Arturo Miguel]

Needs proofreading. Like a bad episode of ER in bizarro world.

[Jody]

Another interesting and thought-provoking story by Dr Gold. The Kindle edition desperately needs an editor.

[Barb Blasch]

I plan to read more of this series.

[Tam French]

Fantastic Read

Great characters and the story moved along at a good pace. It also kept you wanting more. Glad Polk got his.

[Patricia Hankins]

Status

Some doctors only care about money and their reputation. Ppower and politics is taking the name if the game even in medicine,,, but things are changing