This is Going to Hurt by Adam Kay - #BookReview

 

In 2010, after six years of training and a further six years on the wards, I resigned from my job as a junior doctor. My parents still haven't forgiven me.

Last year, the General Medical Council wrote to me to say they were taking my name off the medical register. It wasn't exactly a huge shock, as I hadn't practised medicine in half a decade, but I found it a big deal on an emotional level to permanently close this chapter of my life.

It was, however, excellent news for my spare room, as I cleared out box after box of old paperwork, shredding files faster than Jimmy Carr's accountant.

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Welcome to the life of a junior doctor: 97-hour weeks, life and death decisions, a constant tsunami of bodily fluids, and the hospital parking meter earns more than you.

Scribbled in secret after endless days, sleepless nights and missed weekends, Adam Kay's This is Going to Hurt provides a no-holds-barred account of his time on the NHS front line. Hilarious, horrifying and heartbreaking, this diary is everything you wanted to know – and more than a few things you didn't – about life on and off the hospital ward.

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I am a bit late to the party with this book as it was published in 2017. However, whilst recently watching the television adaptation with my husband, he mentioned that he did not remember the book being as depressing as it was being depicted. So, having rummaged through his book shelves (he has no alphabetical or other organisational system to his shelves tut, tut) I successfully retrieved his copy and set about reading it.

He was correct. The book is written with more humour, whilst at the same time portraying difficult situations, attributing many of the problems with the NHS to management and senior levels. It is clear that the author understood that the shortcomings do not lie with the nurses and doctors, who work extremely hard, but with the management who are focused on targets and statistics.

In contrast to the television series, the book portrays Kay's years of practising medicine across several different hospitals. Consequently, he met a number of medical staff during this time. The series placed him in one hospital, and I suspect the cast members were a composite of different medical practitioners he encountered across his years in medicine.

I am glad that I read the book which was published prior to the covid pandemic when, as a nation, we witnessed how dedicated NHS staff really are. Kay is a considerable loss to medicine.

ISBN: 978 1509858637

Publisher: Picador

Formats: paperback, e-book and audio

No. of Pages: 304

About the Author:

Adam Kay is an award-winning comedian and writer. He previously worked for many years as a junior doctor. His first book, This is Going to Hurt: Secret Diaries of a Junior Doctor, was a Sunday Times number one bestseller for over a year and has sold over two million copies. It has been translated into 37 languages and is winner of four National Book Awards, including Book of the Year, and is now a major new comedy drama for the BBC.

His second book, Twas the Nightshift Before Christmas, was an instant Sunday Times number one bestseller and sold over 500,000 copies in its first few weeks.

Dear NHS, edited by Adam Kay, was an instant Sunday Times number one with all profits donated to charity. His first children's book, Kay's Anatomy, was released in October 2020. 

(author photo & bio info courtesy of Good Reads)