This is Going to Hurt: Secret Diaries of a Junior Doctor
By Adam Kay
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.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/This-Going-Hurt-Secret-Diaries/dp/1509858636
‘This is going to hurt’ is an amusing and captivating book. It informs the reader of the positives of working in hospitals and the hardships many students, nurses and doctors face throughout their journey. I would definitely recommend this book for everyone to read, especially if want some humour.
Definitely a great book about the hard work of a junior doctor. But I feel like Adam Kay was pushed into medicine by his parents and the expectations they put on him. At the start he talks about him going to a school which just sprouts “lawyers, doctors and civil servants”. Maybe he would have been much happier if he tried to follow a different career and not just what he was pushed into. Also the diary entries are from 2004-2010. So although there are still many truths in them it does feel a little dated, in my opinion.
Great critique, Michal – it is worth noting that Adam Kay may be a slightly biased source, having been pushed into medicine, and that many things (including shift patterns for juniors) have changed since 2004!
This is an absolute classic and I remember it being the first medical book I ever read and I haven’t looked back since! At places, it made me start laughing randomly on public transport and making a fool out of myself, but it was well worth it and is great in portraying the nature and challenges of medicine as a profession in an easily digestible and intriguing manner.
Whilst being amusing for the most part, what I appreciate most is how Adam Kay is still able to portray the importance of obtaining a realistic insight beforehand and how one shouldn’t stumble into medicine blindly. This was an important take away for me and reading this book, really has furthered my love and excitement for medicine as although amongst the amazing moments it is important to accept that there will be some really tough challenges, medicine is a profession where each day is different and you’ll definitely not be getting bored anytime soon!
Thank you for choosing such amazing books to start with and for creating this book club – I’m really looking forward to seeing the upcoming recommendations!
I completely agree that the issue is laughing in public with this book – and sometimes cringing, too!
Thank you for joining!
Adam Kay certainly serves as the vehicle for shattering the generalised utopian image of the NHS often visualised by aspiring medics – although the NHS is the Socialist haven granted to us by Aneurin Bevan which destroys all inequalities and does not let socio-economic status define any delegation of treatment, it certainly highlights plausible issues with the job. After all, no matter what profession you desire to pursue, there will always be some form form of disadvantage associated with it. It is certainly useful for an applicant to be educated on the difficulties associated with the career – you need to know what you are signing yourself up for! This book in essence serves as a comical deletion of any naivety that a potential applicant has regarding the format of the NHS. And yet it is definitely a brilliant introduction to obstetrics and gynaecology. He illustrates all medical jargon in language analogous to baby terms and beautifully drives us through the heavy journey of dedicating your life to such a demanding career. Of course this book will never serve to deter my ambitions of entering medicine, but it was certainly an eye-opener to the mountains of work that I am signing up for. In fact it actually motivated more to want to pursue medicine as it is clearly a career I can devote myself to: a lifestyle, not just a career choice. With the volume of work I will be dedicating myself to, I can guarantee that I will never get bored. The amount of choice you have as a doctor is incredible: from specialties, to research, to teaching, to private work. I must mention that I have to question the veracity of some of his pithy anecdotes. “The Night Shift Before Christmas” serves as a suitable supplement to this book.
P.S. do not read this book in public- you will frighten those surrounding you with your inevitable cascades of laughter. This book is seriously funny.
I mean it.
I completely agree – it definitely doesn’t look at the role of a junior doctor through rose-tinted glasses! Are there any particular cases you feel don’t ring true?
‘This is going to hurt’ by Adam Kay is a hilarious, brilliant and honest depiction of the highs and lows experienced by him when working for the NHS, it gave me gain an insight to the harsh realities of being a junior doctor, it is written in a way that is easy to digest, Kay paints a vivid picture on the effects that pursuing a career in medicine can have on your mental health, personal relationships etc. Though this book has not deterred me from pursuing a career in medicine it has given me a more clear description of what i am letting myself in for than anyone or anything else could.
However, in the book Kay mentions that his younger sister also went to medical school, this suggests that his family may have pushed for him to go into medicine as he also mentions that he went to school around doctors, lawyers etc. This may mean that medicine is not something Kay was truly passionate about in the first place.
Nevertheless, this book is still hilarious and one of my favourites and it definitely gave me a lot to think about.
It is a very amusing book, but I am the belief that the humour tells us more than we might think. Everyone seems to interpret it differently, but one thing in common is about the hardships of doctors in the NHS at that time. For me another thing stuck, I found it really surprising that doctors are not praised for what they are doing( as they should be). Also, the fact that he talks about keeping every card he gets from his patients implying that he doesn’t get a lot, because if he did he wouldn’t keep them all. That really surprised me and I am thinking of doing something nice now for my local hospital and it’s staff. It’s really an illuminating book for everyone, not a medical student in particular. I would highly recommend ! 🙂