Medical students and physicians in training are often pushed to the brink, working long hours under intense pressure and scrutiny for years. In their quest to heal others, doctors themselves sometimes become collateral damage.  

In Do No Harm, the reader is brought into the life and mind of its main character Michael. We see a fictionalized account one surgeon whose traumatic childhood includes poverty and medical illness. He is inspired to find a future that is better than the one he sees around him. He struggles through medical school and surgical training, only then to be stricken with mental illness. For decades he is able to conceal his illness, to have a family and a build a career, until ultimately, he loses control.   

The book deals with the themes of profound loneliness and the pressure to succeed in our modern world and how they impact the psyche. The dysfunction of medical training and of the mental health care system are also in the spotlight here.  

From the beginning, the reader is placed in the mind of the main character, who uses music as a tool to cope and escape. Each chapter begins with a paragraph describing the character’s interpretation of an obscure jazz tune, the intimate thoughts in his head. Everything has hidden meanings to him.  

It’s a sobering tale that takes readers on a deep dive into the hardened, sometimes unforgiving culture of medical training and the toll it all takes on the individual. The author’s unique style and the shifting between multiple narrators gives the reader a perspective from inside mental illness.

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Daniel Ochalek’s debut novel, Do No Harm, is an insightful and thought-provoking psychological thriller that will stay with you long after you read it. With the same complexities of the jazz pieces that introduce each chapter, Ochalek masterfully takes you on a gripping journey into the protagonist’s inner world, that of the relenting voice of childhood trauma, the toll of becoming a surgeon, and working in the medical profession, and old haunting relationships... that all ends with a satisfying twist!

“The author starts each chapter with a phrase of a Jazz song. Along with the story, it shows the chaos of the story, and the chaos in the mind of the character. Very well done. I am recommending this for my next book club. It will be a very interesting talk at the meeting. Everyone will have their own interpretation. Looking forward to it. Also looking forward to the next Ohalek works.”