The Bad Doctor
2 primary works
Book 1
Incontinent old ladies, men with eagle tattoos, traumatised widowers - Iwan's patients cause him both empathy and dismay, as he tries to do his best in a world of limited time and budgetary constraints, and in which there are no easy answers. His feelings for his partners also cause him grief: something more than friendship for the sympathetic Dr Lois Pritchard, and not a little frustration at the prankish and obstructive Dr Robert Smith.
Iwan's cycling trips with his friend Arthur provide some welcome relief, but even the landscape is imbued with his patients' distress. As we explore the phantoms from Iwan's past, we too begin to feel compassion for The Bad Doctor, and ask what is the dividing line between patient and provider?
Wry, comic, graphic, from the humdrum to the tragic, his patients' stories are the spokes that make Iwan's wheels go round, as all humanity, it seems, passes through his surgery door.
Ian Williams is the author of Sick Notes, a weekly comic strip in The Guardian about the state of the NHS. The Bad Doctor was highly commended in the Primary Healthcare category of the British Medical Association Medical Books Awards 2015.
Book 2
Lois Pritchard, a general practitioner at the Welsh Llangandida Health Centre and part-time staff at her local Genitourinary Medicine (GUM) clinic, is a forty-year-old, divorced, sarcastic smoker who by her own admission is “not very good with relationships.” But when her estranged mother makes a dramatic reappearance demanding a liver transplant, Lois has to examine her loyalties and confront some hard decisions both in and out of the surgery room.
This hilarious, warts-and-all follow-up to Ian Williams’s graphic novel The Bad Doctor is an entertainingly realistic look at rural medicine and the unique personalities it attracts, from patients with genital tattoos of cartoon characters to doctors who find creative ways to color on either side of the ethical lines. Via a cast of relatable and sometimes shocking characters, Williams explores the politics and pitfalls of a small-town practice, the frustration of dealing with demanding and misguided patients, the double standards facing female medical practitioners, and current medical issues such as clinic privatization and hardening government attitudes towards drugs and addiction, all with his wonderfully sly sense of humor.
The Lady Doctor shows that life and work in the medical field can be anything but clinical, and that even the most talented of professionals have wildly unexpected bad days. Fans of Graphic Medicine will cheer this new saga from a trailblazer of the genre, as will medical professionals and comics readers of all stripes.