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.