‘Painfully funny. The pain and the funniness somehow add up to something entirely good, entirely noble and entirely loveable.’ – Stephen FryThe Sunday Times Number One Bestseller and Humour Book of the YearWinner of the Books Are My Bag Book of the YearWinner of iBooks’ Book of the YearWelcome to the life of a junior doctor: 97-hour weeks, life and death decisions, a constant tsunami of bodily … 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.As seen on ITV’s Zoe Ball Book Club This edition includes extra diary entries and a new afterword by the author.
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Very funny. A true insight into the medical profession. As a medical student it was so relatable and shockingly terrifying all at the same time.
Simultaneously devastating and hilarious (though mostly hilarious) – a reminder of how we need to do a better job of cherishing the NHS and those who work in it.
This book has plenty of reviews already, is a bestseller and is high, if not actually number 1, in the rankings, at least in the UK. For obvious reasons, mostly because of it being set in the NHS, it is not quite as popular in the US. It doesn’t need my review but actually I’m still making the effort because for me this book corrected an assumption I’d made, and opened my eyes up to the view from a doctor’s perspective on the bloody trenches he served in within the NHS.
I really enjoyed Kay’s writing and because it was set out as diary entries it made the book a quick read. I liked the footnotes, sometimes funny, or a casual aside, sometimes imparting useful information, so there was an element of learning in there too.
I mentioned an assumption above, which was that I thought doctors were highly paid. This is based purely on the fact that when I was horrified about the amount of debt my son was going to rack up, when he was considering pursuing a career in medicine, I was told that doctors were usually the first to pay back their student loans because their wages were so high. From this book that appears not to be the case.
Adam Kay came across to me as a conscientious, hardworking and dedicated doctor (if a slightly sarcastic one, his words, not mine – and I am a fan of sarcasm) and it is to the shame of the NHS that he is not still practising. However, medicine’s loss is comedy’s gain, I guess.
I understand that medicine is a vocation, but it shouldn’t mean that those that follow that path should be taken advantage of by being worked into the ground, with time off cancelled on a whim and regular unpaid overtime, a knock on effect being strained friendships and ruined relationships.
I felt this book highlighted so many issues that are wrong in the NHS – the fact that wards are underequipped, shifts inadequately staffed, and I was staggered by the seemingly complete lack of support for all the employees. In fact, if anything the management appeared to make life as difficult as possible for them every day – no free parking and beds removed from on-call rooms just a couple of examples.
How on earth can you expect people to work a 97-hour week and still function correctly? And yet this is absolutely what is happening week in and week out to people who are dealing with life and death situations every day. Of course mistakes are going to be made.
This book is funny, in places, darkly funny you might say, gallows humour I think Kay calls it at one point. I like that kind of funny and it’s just as well it had those moments because when the heartbreak comes it really hits hard.
Why is it that it is so difficult to get things right at a grassroots level in the NHS? Look after the talent by giving them the right equipment, the right support and a decent work life balance. It’s as simple as that. The doctors are there, surely, medicine is incredibly competitive to get into so the universities are presumably churning out doctors at the other end, but if the NHS continues to use and abuse the staff as something akin to cannon fodder is it any wonder there is a staffing crisis.
My bet is that if Kay had been supported adequately in the first place and was not already utterly and completely mentally overwhelmed, then, when he faced a heartbreakingly tragic outcome on just another day for him at this particular coal face he would probably still be practising medicine. Like I said before, medicine’s loss.
I love the NHS, I feel it is something to be cherished and nurtured. I have met many fabulous people who work in it and I hope that this book is read as widely as possible to enlighten those, like me, who have tended to take it for granted and for others, ooh I don’t know, perhaps those in management, maybe even in Government, to take a long hard look at what they are doing and what needs to be done, to make the massive improvements that are needed to the working conditions.
An excellent read, I recommend it to everyone not of a nervous disposition.
Absolutely brilliant!
Biting wit, funny and world-weary.
A darkly hilarious and heartwarming look at what it’s like to be a junior doctor. Sometimes the stories were so horrifying, surprising and amusing I had to read almost all of them out loud to my husband. Other times I laughed so hard I felt like I could barely breathe. I highly recommend!
“a great doctor must have a huge heart and a distended aorta through which pumps a vast lake of compassion and human kindness.”
I started reading this book months ago and took my time enjoying every single word of this beautiful book.
Adam Kay writing style is funny , sarcastic ,yet , heartbreaking and realistic . One of the best authors I had the chance to read for .
“It’s funny – you don’t think of doctors getting ill.’ It’s true, and I think it’s part of something bigger: patients don’t actually think of doctors as being human. It’s why they’re so quick to complain if we make a mistake or if we get cross. It’s why they’ll bite our heads off when we finally call them into our over-running clinic room at 7 p.m., not thinking that we also have homes we’d rather be at. But it’s the flip side of not wanting your doctor to be fallible, capable of getting your diagnosis wrong. They don’t want to think of medicine as a subject that anyone on the planet can learn, a career choice their mouth-breathing cousin could have made.”
My book is all annotated 😛 because literally I LOVED EVERY THING ABOUT THIS BOOK .
Kay discussed important topics like the suffering and bad conditions of the health care systems Workers .
He talked about How a simple ” Thank you ” or ” How are you doing ” from the patients to their doctors or nurses , could brighten up their whole day .
“From the most insignificant of actions can come the most serious of consequences.”
In my opinion , this is a very important book , everyone should read .
Highly recommended .
Wow. I found his honesty and humour refreshing and what an eye opener to the realities of a student Dr. I couldn’t put it down.
A great easy to read book that documents the life of a junior doctor. It throws a light on the pressures of working in the NHS.
‘This Is Going To Hurt’ has been a book that lingered on my TBR list for what has felt like forever. Part of me not sure on whether I’d be able to handle the re-telling of what a doctor has seen and experienced, and the other worrying it would be ‘too serious’. I was wrong and I really enjoyed it. So much so that it has instilled a heightened respect in me for all of our medical professionals and the journey that have been through just to even qualify.
I love the format of the book, it’s brief overviews and then diary entries of specific events that build up a bigger picture. As a reader you enjoy the brutal honesty of Kay’s perspective as a brand new doctor, and revel in his journey and the building of confidence as years pass by, and he learns new skills.
I also loved the witty humour that instils a rapport with you as a reader, it kept my interest and helped me remain reading during the less amusing incidents, or the bits that made me feel queasy.
This book was an education for me, I knew doctors had it tough by working long hours and were underpaid, but I think like most readers and society, I was not aware of the emotional strain it can cause, the mental impact certain situations can have and how much they literally give in their lives and don’t get much recognition. It gave me perspective on different patients views or beliefs and how it can make a doctors job that extra bit tougher. It was just a remarkable book that needed to be written.
I feel this book is ideal for people who love learning, have a genuine interest in the medical profession, perhaps like political and autobiographical books etc. It was entertaining, engaging and worth its spot as a bestseller.
An easy to read, sometimes sad, sometimes laugh-out-loud, glimpse of the realities of life for a hospital doctor working for the National Health Service. Makes you realise doctors are human like anyone else.
I absolutely loved this book!
Fabulous book. Made me snort with laughter and cry like a baby. Highly recommended.
I’m a sucker for doctor memoirs, and read just about every one every written, but this one really stole my heart. Adam Kay is a British doctor—an obstetrician—and his stories of patients, colleagues and the vagaries of the National Health Service and his hospital will make you wheeze with laughter sometimes and cry at others. He has a gift for encapsulating life and death events with both humor, intelligence and compassion. A quick read, wickedly funny, kind-hearted and with a perfect dash of bitterness that makes it completely captivating and real.
THIS IS GOING TO HURT is a hilarious and sobering memoir that reveals the funny and serious sides of being a junior doctor. The book is written through a series of diary entries that offer a peek into the six years Adam Kay worked his way up to senior registrar (attending physician) on a labor and delivery ward with the English National Health Service.
I loved that he balances heartbreak with plenty of snide British humor. There are stories of intense sleep deprivation, unrelenting pressure, foreign objects wedged into places they shouldn’t go, laugh-out-loud conversations with clueless parents-to-be, and anecdotes about projectile bodily fluids.
Many nights I fell asleep laughing, but the book ends with a powerful message about why Adam quit doctoring and the lack of training for the psychological impact of the job. When I turned the last page, I was full of admiration for the dedication of the doctors of the English National Health Service, including my own brother-in-law.
If a stressed medical student can’t put it down: it’s a great book! Delightfully funny, the pages practically turn themselves.
Warning: this book is going to hurt.
Your body will hurt from laughter. Your laughter will irritate those around you and you will be relegated to a separate room, causing hurt feelings. Or–they will be jealous of the fun you are having and that will hurt their feelings.
Your head will hurt considering all the things that can go wrong in delivering a baby.
And your heart will hurt learning the sacrifices and ordeals required to become a doctor.
In This Is Going to Hurt, Adam Kay, NHS ob/gyn doctor shares stories from the surgical rooms and hospital beds that are unbelievable. I can’t even share some of the stories here. Let’s just say that people can do some pretty strange things and eating a hospital spoon is one of the less strange ones in this book. His stories in the delivery room can be pretty funny and pretty gruesome.
Kay can be politically incorrect and some of his stories are scandalous.
And yet I ‘got’ so much of his experience.
There are the high costs of becoming a doctor: expensive schooling, the long hours, being on call, the lack of time for a personal life and family, the meager salary and unpaid overtime, the emotional drain that makes you create a hard shell, the stress, the burn-out. Many professionals can relate to these issues.
It is the heavy burden of being held accountable for life and death decisions that is unique to medical careers. Human error–a slip of the hand or a misdiagnosis in the medical record, the things you can’t control–and the doctor goes home feeling they weren’t good enough, alert enough, smart enough, lucky enough.
Kay’s experience in the British National Health Service could be a warning to Americans considering national health care options. To keep costs down, the NHS caps salaries. Low pay and long hours contribute to staffing problems.
Kay mentions he has to pay for parking. So do patients. Some doctors leave England to work in for-profit systems.
But the UK medical system rating is quite a bit above the US. It’s doing something right.
Kay’s writing reminded me of David Sedaris. I laughed, I was embarrassed by what I was laughing at, and Kay engaged my mind and my heart.
I received access to a free ebook through NetGalley. My review is fair and unbiased.
Horrifying doesn’t begin to describe many of the author’s experiences and actions in this book! As a comedy writer for tv, he is very good at telling a story in a funny way. However most of the stories also include gory descriptions, profanity (including taking the Lord’s name in vain), or a lack of concern for the feelings of patients and even so called friends.
After reading this book, I wonder how much is manufactured or changed for entertainment value. He seems prone to exaggerate. Remember, Adam Kay now writes comedy for television. I doubt he kept a faithful diary because of the general lack of time for ordinary life and complete exhaustion he mentions.
*Anyone who knows the rarely used (by moms in the natural birth community) term placentophagia is also sure to know what a placenta looks like and that placentas are generally dried and encapsulated NOT eaten raw like a lioness no matter how humorous it may seem.
Adam describes the whole experience as “perversely exhilarating” which feels like this was a bit of a narcissistic power trip. Interestingly he shows us the foibles of other medical staff in questionable integrity but his honesty is nearly always above reproach. There is the episode where he hypothetically talks about a humiliating passive aggressive surgical act he could have done in regards to a patient but claims to have not followed through with as it could lead to potential litigation. This “funny” situation places him as a potential ‘social justice hero’. Frankly, an intolerant passive-aggressive doctor is frightening!
One of the job non-benefits that surprised Adam Kay was frequent over time that strained personal relationships. He complains about total fatigue and uncompensated work hours throughout the book because of understaffed hospitals. He says they don’t even have time to eat or take breaks most of the time. Very dangerous to have over tired medical personnel!
Perhaps you might say we need to hire more doctors. Forbes has suggestions (link) for fixing medical schools and through this improving the medical system. The most notable suggestion is to stop incentivizing medical schools and students to focus more on specialty practice over general medicine. Yet it isn’t clear how to accomplish this. The true bottleneck to medical schools receiving more students is not addressed either.
Adam Kay’s assertion that he respects patients’ choices rings hollow as he describes scare tactics he employs to bully patients into his way of doing things often using forceps or cesarean deliveries despite the inherent risks.
Mocking patients for being overweight, using natural remedies, or religious beliefs were other demeaning stories. Yet the author seems unsatisfied not knowing the end result for his patients. One of his more human aspects. His further feelings of awkwardness in dealing with grieving patients and wish to do more is a familiar feeling for most of us. He talks about the necessity of developing a “hardened emotional exoskeleton” to deal with all the hard stuff that happens with patients.
He concludes with a plea to not allow government, i.e. British government, “to take a pickax to the (nationalized) health-care system.” I suggest taking a different approach. More government controls, more legislation will never fix what was broken through that process in the first place.
As more doctors and hospitals embrace meditation, yoga, healing touch, and now we may begin to see health coaches (link) involved in patient care there may begin to be more tolerance toward patient choice in the medical system in general. Let us hope!
Tyler Cowen’s new book Big Business: A Love Letter to an American Anti-Hero looks like it has some interesting advice on the topic of healthcare reform. I am intrigued by what I’ve read about the book and hope we can integrate more free market principles in the healthcare system.
It is interesting to note that amidst the push for Medicare For All, there has been a significant reform to Medicare in recent history that brought some measure of relief to people in the system. Medicare Part D’s success in reducing costs and improving health outcomes seems to be in large part because of the increased choices (link) and free market principles it afforded.
When I first read the title, This Is Going to Hurt, I did not realize it referred to how it would feel to read (and review) this book. I urge you to consider reading Big Business: A Love Letter to an American Anti-Hero instead!
I received a free advanced reader copy of this book. All opinions are completely my own.
See the full review on BookofRuthAnn.com for quotes and article links!
This book is heartbreaking, hilarious and truly important. I believe in its humanity, its spirit and its conscience. The best doctor’s visit you will ever have.
Brilliant. Five stars. Amazing.