Thom Ferrier

Content warning for suicide and suicidal ideation.

The Bad Doctor is a contemporary-set graphic novel about a doctor, his dealings with patients, and his struggles with his own mental health. As a doctor, Iwan James has a responsibility to make diagnoses and decisions that could have a huge impact on his patients' lives. He's also a human being who makes mistakes and has his own doubts and problems.

We see several of his patients in this volume: a man struggling with intrusive thoughts, an elderly lady with ulcerated legs, a man who creeps out Dr. James and others, and more. Flashbacks to Dr. James' childhood and college days show him struggling with OCD - he believes those around him can only remain safe if he does things a certain way, and at the same time his actions and the things around him have the power to harm those he cares about. A lot of his intrusive thoughts are rooted in religion - he worries that listening to heavy metal ("blasphemous music") led to the death of his dog, and when his girlfriend becomes pregnant, he worries about what music might have been playing when she conceived and what exposure to blasphemous things (or even his own blasphemous thoughts) might do to her and the twins they eventually learn she's carrying.

In the present, Iwan James is going through a bit of a midlife crisis and has intrusive thoughts about shooting himself. He never sought treatment for his OCD, but now he starts to consider whether it's time he does so.

This was okay. It made for somewhat disjointed reading, especially since I didn't initially realize that the child in the first few flashbacks was Iwan. I wasn't sure which, if any, of the patient storylines would prove to have some larger importance to the story, Iwan's intrusive suicidal thoughts were jarring (always an image of himself with a gun in his mouth standing in front of a mirror, shooting his own brains out), and his clear interest in his colleague, Lois, was awkward to watch.

I appreciated the way it presented OCD and intrusive thoughts, and it definitely drives home that doctors aren't superhuman. I've read better medical graphic novels, though.

(Original review posted on A Library Girl's Familiar Diversions.)… (mais)

Ian Wiliams es un médico galés afincado en Brighton que acuñó el término graphic medicine (medicina gráfica), y, posteriormente, con la enfermera norteamericana MK Czerwiec comenzaron este movimiento creativo que se enriqueció con congresos y actividades artísticas, educativas y divulgativas. En 2015, junto a otros autores publicaron el cómic-ensayo The Graphic Medicine Manifesto, libro inédito en España por el momento, que serviría como muestra de los elementos básicos y comunes de este movimiento. El grupo español de medicina gráfica, capitaneado por la doctora y traductora Mónica Lalanda, añadió a esta definición el concepto de herramienta comunicativa y amplió el aspecto gráfico para incluir las infografías quedando la definición como: «El uso del cómic o la novela gráfica, la ilustración y la infografía como herramientas de comunicación sanitaria».

Un mal médico nos invita a conocer al Dr. Iwan James. A través de sus vivencias como médico de atención primara y de las vivencias de sus pacientes, Iwan es capaz de mostrarnos la mejor y la peor cara de la medicina. Cuando los profesionales sanitarios y el propio sistema son capaces de ayudar a los pacientes, pero también cuando fracasan en el intento. También conoceremos a Lois y Robert, dos compañeros de trabajo, Arthur un buen amigo suyo con el que comparte afición por el ciclismo, y Carole, su esposa. Gracias a todo este elenco de secundarios profundizaremos en los demonios del Dr. Iwan. Ser médico no te convierte en inmune a las enfermedades y el suyo es el mejor ejemplo.… (mais)

We tend to view doctors as omnipotent but this story will put paid to that. Who is the bad doctor here? I like the way the story leaves that open to interpretation. The main character, a rural GP, has plenty of problems of his own aside from dealing with tricky patients, and it's an empathic rendering of his struggles with OCD and how he has had to keep that hidden because of his job. Plenty of humorous side-detail in the drawing and a welcome insight into the humanness and fallibility of doctors.… (mais)